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PHILADELPHIA: 
PKE8BTTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 



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LEARNING TO THINK. 



The Lord of glory keep in sight 

In all your thoughts and ways; 
He only learns to think aright 
Who reads His word with true delight, 
And lives to act his praise. 




PHILADELPHIA : 
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 






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&!BA,33&KrSEKr<® X«D XaE&snSc 




CHAPTER I. 




\HARLES ! stop a moment, will 
you? I want to speak with 
you." 

"You must be quick, then, 
that I may have a run with 
my hoop. What is it you want with me ?" 
" Come here, and I will tell you. How 
do you like the neighbourhood now ? You 
seemed to feel it very strange when you first 
came." 
* Yes ; but we have been here a fortnight 



6 LEARNING TO THINK. 

now, and I have picked up some playfel- 
Iqws." 

"So I see. Your iron hoop runs along 
this hard ground capitally. Can you tell 
me what it is that makes it go along so fa- 
mously ?" 

" What it is ! To be sure I can. It is my 
stick ; you know that very well ! The harder 
I hit it, the faster it goes." 

" But hit this post as hard as you like with 
your stick, and it will not stir from the place 
where it stands." 

" No ! That is because it is fast in the 
ground." 

" Yonder is a post that is not fast in the 
ground, but lying down in the road ; hit that, 
then, with your stick, and see if it will run 
along like your hoop." 

" I know it will not, because it is so heavy ; 
it is of no use to hit that." 

" Well, then, here is my pocket handker- 
chief; let us see how you can knock that 
along. Surely that will not be too heavy for 
you." 

" No ; but it will be too light. The hand- 
kerchief would not run along at all." 

" The post is too heavy, and the pocket- 
handkerchief is too light; you are hard to 
please : but suppose I put a stone in the hand- 



LEARNING TO THINK. 7 

kerchief, and make it just what weight you 
please, will you bowl it along then with your 
stick ?" 

" No, that I could not." 

" And why not ?" 

" Why, because — because it would not run 
along at all." 

" But can you tell me the reason why it 
would not run along at all ?" 

" No, I cannot ; I never thought about it." 

" I dare say not ; for we boys very seldom 
do think about any thing but our play, unless 
we are obliged to it. But now let me tell 
you what I wanted to say to you." 

" Do, and then I will be off again ; for 
yonder is Edwin Palmer with his hoop, and 
I want to join him. His hoop is bigger than 
mine, but still I can outrun him. What is it 
you are going to tell me ?" 

" Why, I wanted to talk with you about 
Learning to Think." 

" Learning to think ! I never heard of 
such a thing!" 

* I dare say not ; but for all that, I only 
wish that I had begun to learn sooner." 

"But where is the good of learning to 
think?" 

" Where is the good ! What a question ! 
But I dare say that I should have asked it 



8 LEARNING TO THINK. 

myself a few years ago, and, therefore, I 
ought not to be surprised at you. If people 
had not thought about things, we should 
never have had the comforts and pleasures 
we now enjoy. The food we eat, the clothes 
we wear, the houses we live in, have all 
been the subject of much thought ; and our 
very pastimes, too. Why does the peg-top 
spin, the ball bounce, the humming-top make 
a noise, and the kite fly in the air ? I hardly 
think you can answer me one of these ques- 
tions. Now, if you had learned to think, you 
would be able to answer them all." 

" Should I ?" 

" Yes, that you would ; but, instead of be- 
ing able to answer them now, you cannot tell 
me, I dare say, why a battledoor will not fly 
in the air as well as a kite. It is something 
of the same form ; why will it not rise in the 
air?" 

" It is too heavy." 

" Too heavy ! Why, a large kite is as heavy 
as two battledoors; so that cannot be the 
reason." 

" I cannot think, then." 

" And for that very reason you should learn 
to think. Now, try to find out why the boy's 
Kite, yonder, does not go up higher in the air 
when he has let out all the string ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



" Because the string holds it fast, and keeps 
it from going up higher." 

" Then how is it that, if the string breaks, 
instead of the kite going up higher, it comes 
tumbling down directly ?" 

" I cannot tell that, I am sure. Can you ?" 

* Yes, I can, and many other things of 
which I once knew nothing. I am several 
years older than you, and ought to know 




more ; but if you would learn to think, what 
is now hard to you to understand would soon 
become easy. Thinking people have a great 
advantage over others, for they are much 
wiser : they can give better advice, and assist 
others, for they know the best way. of doing 
things, and the proper time when to do them. 
If you wanted to know how many grains of 



10 LEARNING TO THINK. 

corn there are in a bag of wheat, how would 
you find it out ?" 

u Count them, to be sure." 

" That would be one way, but not the way 
a thinking person would set about it. Why, 
if you counted two hundred every minute, 
and kept it up day and night for a whole 
week, you would hardly be able to get through 
your task." 

"How would you set about it, then? It 
is a puzzle to me how it could be done with- 
out counting." 

" I would first weigh an ounce of wheat 
out of the bag, and count the number of 
grains in that one ounce. Then I would 
weigh the whole bag together, to see how 
many ounces there were in all. If, after that, 
I multiplied the number of grains in one 
ounce by the number of ounces in the whole 
bag, it would give me the amount of grains 
altogether ; and this might be done, if a pair 
of scales were near, in ten minutes or a 
quarter of an hour." 

u I should never have thought of that plan, 
however : but what is the use of learning to 
count the grains in a bag of wheat ?" 

"Just the same use as there is in learning 
to do a sum : it teaches us to reckon in the 
quickest and the best way. There would be 



LEARNING TO THINK. 11 

no good in a boy learning the alphabet, only 
that it enables him to read ; and there would 
be but little advantage in learning to write 
copies in a copy book, if it did not fit us to 
write letters, bills of parcels, and other things, 
all through our lives." 

" Well, that plan of counting the grains is 
a capital one." 

" It was not hit upon without thought, de- 
pend upon it. Some time ago, I heard of a 
thoughtless cottager, who, seeing that a crop 
of grass had grown on the old thatch of his 
cottage, tried all manner of contrivances to 
get a cow that belonged to him up to the roof 
of his cottage, to eat the grass." 

" And how did he manage it at last ?" 

" Why, a neighbour of his, who had learned 
to think, told him, that though he could not 
get the cow up to the grass, yet he might, 
perhaps, manage to cut the grass, and bring 
it down to the cow 5 and this plan was 
adopted without difficulty." • 

" Ah ! ah ! ah ! What a foolish cottager 
he must have been !" 

" He had never learned to think. I read a 
story yesterday about a mischievous monkey, 
that, after doing much damage, ran up a thin 
tall tree, and took shelter in the top branches.. 
Two men undertook to catch him. One of 



12 LEARNING TO THINK. 

them had learned to think, and the other had 
not. The thoughtless man climbed up the 
tree as far as he could ; but he was obliged to 
come down again, for the thin branches would 
not bear his weight. The thinker then step- 
ped forwards, but, instead of climbing the tree, 
he set to work with his axe, and soon brought 
down the tree and the mischievous monkey 
to the ground. " 

" Capital ! So poor pug was taken at last. 
I begin to have a notion that ' learning to 
think' is a capital thing, and I should like to 
talk with you a litttle more about it another 
time." 

" Well, then, be off with your hoop now, 
for I see that Palmer is waiting for you. No 
doubt I shall see you to-morrow, and then 
1 learning to think' shall be the subject of our 
conversation." 






LEARNING TO THINK. 



13 




CHAPTER II. 




THOUGHT I should find you 
out to-day, Charles ! you are 
sailing your ship, I see. How 
famously it goes along now the 
wind blows ! Can you tell me 
why it floats on the water, and does not sink 
to the bottom ?" 

" Because it is made of wood, Henry, and 
wood is very light ; that is the reason." 

" But see, here is a shot. It is not a tenth 
part so heavy as your ship. A tenth part ! 
No, nor a hundredth part ; and yet, when I 
put it into the water it sinks directly. What 
is the reason of it ?" 

2 



H LEARNING TO THINK. 

"I cannot tell, I never thought about it. 
If you know, you should tell me. What is 
the use of asking me puzzling questions, and 
telling me nothing about them ? You never 
told me why a peg-top spins, a humming-top 
makes a noise, a ball bounces, and a kite flies 
in the air ?" 

" No, I did not, and for this very good 
reason : I wanted you to think a little, that 
you might be able to find out the reason 
yourself. So long as you are told every thing, 
you will never be a thinker." 

" If I could get any body to teach me to 
think, I should like to learn." 

" Well, then, if you will learn to think, I 
will teach you as well as I can, and you shall 
know all that my kind tutor, Mr. White, 
teaches me. He has paid great attention to 
me, and I have done my best to make pro- 
gress. He tells me that, to a thinking per- 
son, every thing on which the eye can look 
becomes an object of interest. In the grains 
of corn, he sees the food on which millions of 
people live ; in the flax growing in the field, 
and the wool on the sheep's back, he regards 
the clothing that covers mankind ; and in the 
drops of dew that spangle the grass, and the 
stars that glitter in the skies, he beholds 
God's workmanship : nor is there a single 



LEARNING TO THINK. 15 

ig which does not supply him. with usefiu 
reflections. 7 ' 

u If I learn to think, shall I know why a 
peg-top spins, a ball bounces, a humming-top 
makes a noise, and a kite flies in the air ?" 

" Oh, yes, and a hundred things more use- 
ful to know : but see, your ship is unsteady ; 
you should cast anchor. I was by the river 
side yesterday with Mr. White, and we walk- 
ed to a spot where an anchor lay on the 
ground. He talked about it, till I knew a 
great deal more about an anchor than I ever 
before. At first, he put questions to me, 
to set me thinking; then he helped me to 
: : and, after that, he made every ft 
r to me that I did not seem to under- 
let" 
•• I wish I had been there with you.*' 
i; I wish you had ; you would have heard 
something better worth hearing than any 
thing I can tell you. There was one very 
story that he mentioned : it proved 
ly was more important than 
iking much." 

- What was it ? Do tell me.- ' 

tt He said that a man accustomed to think 

:at deal about what was useless, and very 

about what was useful, was on board a 

when the vessel was wrecked. No 




16 LEARNING TO THINS. 

sooner did he see all around him running to 
lay hold of something to keep them afloat, 
than he ran and foolishly took fast hold of the 
anchor/ 

" The anchor ! Why that would sink di- 
rectly !" 

•• No doubt it would. He told me another 
story, also. He said that a party of young 
thoughtless sailors, who were shipwrecked on 
an island where no water was to be found, 
were in great danger of dying of thirst ; when 
it struck one of them, who was accustomed 
to think a little more than the rest, that 
though there was no water on the surface of 
the ground, there might be some ten or twelve 
feet under it. So, after procuring a few pick- 
axes and spades from the wreck, he joined 
companions in sinking a well, when they 
i had water enough and to spare*" 

•• That is a very good tale. Did he tell you 
any more "r 

" Oh. yes. a great deal ; but I cannot think 
of all now. He told me about sheet anchors, 
bower anchors, stream anchors, kedge an- 
chors, and pilot anchors : all of which, he 
said, had been brought to their present per- 
fection by thinking people. After explaining 
to me why an anchor must be large, that the 
thick cable might be fastened to it : and 



LEARNING TO THINK. 17 

heavy and strong, to bear the great stress or 
strain on the cable ; why it had a stock, to 
turn it on one side, that one of the flookes 
might always drag along the ground ; and 
why it had flookes at all, to hook to, or catch 
hold of, the rocks and uneven places at the 
bottom of the sea, that the ship might be 
kept steady at her anchorage : after explain- 
ing all these, he told me that earthly things 
should remind us of heavenly things, and 
thereby be made the more useful to us. God, 
he said, to a thinking mind, was present in 
every thing." 

"How could he make out that? How 
could he make out that God was present in 
every thing." 

" To a thinking mind, remember ! But 
answer my questions, for they will be the 
same that Mr. White put to me. What is 
the use of an anchor?" 

" To keep the ship from being blown 
about, I suppose, when they want her to be 
still." 

" And what is a ship made of?" 

" Of wood, to be sure." 

" And who made the wood grow ?" 

u God made it grow." 

"What is the anchor made of?" 

"Of iron." 

2* 



18 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Where does iron come from V 9 

" Out of the ground." 

" And who put the iron into the ground V 9 

"Why, God put the iron there." 

"Not only did God make the trees grow^ 
of which the ship is made, but he formed the 
sea also. c The sea is his, and he made it, 
and his hands formed the dry ground/ So 
that you see, God is present in the sea, the 
ship, and the anchor. Mr. White said, that 
we should 'see God in all things, and all 
things in God/ But when will you begin to 
learn to think ? I shall be at home to-mor- 
row night, if you can come then : come at six 
o'clock, and I will be prepared for you." 

" Well, then, at six o'clock let it be : but it 
will not suit me if it is very hard." 

" I will make it as easy as I can, and you 
will be surprised to find how fast you get on. 
I know that I was." 

" Can I begin with the peg-top, the ball, 
the humming-top, and the kite? I should 
like that." 

" We shall come to them in time, never 
fear ; but a few things must be attended to 
first. Mr. White says that educating a boy 
vvithout teaching him to think, is like drag- 
ging him through thorns and brambles : by 



LEARNING TO THINK. 19 

teaching him to think you clear the brambles 
and thorns out of his way." 

" All this seems very odd to me ; perhaps 
I shall know more about it, by and by." 

" The power of thinking helps us in every 
thing; it is just like a schoolfellow looking 
over our shoulder, and telling us how to do a 
sum that we do not know how to set about." 

" If it is like that, it will be the very thing 
for me." 

" Thinking aright lessens labour, quickens 
our faculties, increases our understanding, and 
strengthens our judgment. If you should 
ever think that I talk more wisely than 
usual, you must call to mind that I have 
learned what I teach you from Mr. White, or 
my parents." 

* It will be a long while before I shall be 
able to talk so. It seems odd to me that you 
should know so many things as you do." 

" You must remember, that Mr. White has 
had me under his care for three or four years $ 
and then, consider, Charles, you lost your 
parents when you were very young, but 
mine are alive now : my father takes great 
pains with me, when he is at home ; and my 
dear mother, who is one of the wisest and 
best women in the world, never loses an op- 
portunity of instructing me. It would be to 



20 LEARNING TO THINK. 

my shame, indeed, if, after all the care that 
has been taken with me, I had not learned 
something ; though I fear not so much as I 
ought, with my advantages." 

" If I had been brought up as you have, I 
should know more than I do. But what a 
while it is, to be two or three years learning 
to think !" 

" Yes ; but you begin to get good from it 
directly. Every day of your life it will be 
giving you pleasure, and making you more 
useful. Look ! Look ! While we have been 
(3>i talking, your ship has upset; she lies all 
; along on her side, or, as a sailor would say, 
oil her ' beam ends/ To-morrow evening, at 
six o'clock. I will be ready for you." 

" At six o'clock I will come. Good bye !" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 21 




CHAPTER III. 

ELL, Henry ! I am come just 
at the time you fixed. The 
clock struck six as I came up 
the village street and passed the 
church." 

" Yes, Charles, you have kept to the time 
very well. Come in, we have the room all 
to ourselves ; so if there be any quarrelling, it 
will be between us two. There ! sit you 
down at the table." 

" For what use are these things that you 
have put on the table. Are they to teach 
me to think?" 

" We shall see. You know, that when a 
child first begins to learn any thing, he is 
taught the names of the persons and things 
around him ; papa, mamma, dog, cat : and he 
is next taught the qualities of these persons 
and things. He soon knows that papa and 
mamma are kind and good, that the dog 
barks, and the cat mews. This is the begin- 



22 LEARNING TO THINK. 

ning of education ; but as you have learned 
all this, and a great deal more, you must not 
be treated like a very young child. You 
know the name of almost every thing you 
see the moment you look at it." 

" Yes ; but knowing the name of a thing 
does not teach me to think." 

" Perhaps not ; but it is a very necessary 
part of knowledge, and I hardly know how 
J we should manage without it. One thing is 
often necessary to help us in obtaining an- 
other. A jointstool is not a book ; but for all 
^ that, you may find it very useful in putting 
- your foot on it to reach the book from the 
v high shelf in the study : and, in like manner, 
yj knowing the names of things will help us in 



^ 



.thinking about them." 



u The first thing for you to do is to obtain 
more knowledge than you have of the powers, 
the qualities, or properties of things. The 
kindness and goodness of our parents, the 
barking of a dog, and the mewing of a cat, 
are qualities or powers : you understand 
this." 

" Yes, I understand that very well." 
" If I have a knife that is strong and sharp, 
strength and sharpness are qualities of the 
knife. Now, 1 want you to find out the qua- 
lities of things yourself, and this you cannot 



LEARNING TO THINK. 23 

do without thinking. Come, now, tell me 
what this is ; for while I do my part of the 
business, you must do yours." 

" It is a lump of flint, that is all." 

u And what do you think of it ? Take it 
in your hand, and tell me." 

" I do not know what to think about it. It 
is a piece of flint. I cannot think any thing 
else of it." 

" Feel it with your finger. How does it 
feel?" 

" Why it feels hard." 

" What do you mean by feeling hard ?" 

" I mean — that — that — it will not dent in, 
or give way when I press it hard." 

" Very good. Now do you know any 
thing else that is hard ?" 

" Oh, yes ! The poker is hard, the wall is 
hard, and the floor is hard." 

" What do you think of this ? It is a piece 
of dough. How does it feel ?" 

" Oh, quite soft ! When I pinch it, I leave 
on it the mark of my finger and thumb." 

" It is very necessary to be quick in dis- 
tinguishing hard things from soft things. I 
once took a leap from a bank to some ground 
near a brook that I took to be hard, and in I 
went up to my knees ; for it was nothing but 
soft mud." 



* 



24 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Ah ! ah ! ah ! That was a mistake, in- 
deed. Have we done with the flint stone ?" 

" Not quite. Can you think of nothing else 
about it ? Feel it again." 

" It feels rather cold." 

" What do you mean by feeling cold ?" 

I mean that it feels — I do not know how 
it feels." 

" Think about it, and try to explain what 
cold is as well as you can. Now try. How 
does it feel ?" 

"It feels — a little, but only a little, like 
ice — and makes me rather, but not much, 
inclined to shiver." 

" Capital ! Why you have explained it fa- 
\j mously. By and by we shall have you quite 
\\A\a thinker. If you were to touch a hot cinder 
^^r from the fire, I suppose you would say it felt 
\so as to make you snatch away your finger. 
Now, do you not see how a knowledge of the 
qualities of things helps us in thinking and 
speaking? When we want to let another 
know that any thing is very cold or very hot, 
we say it is almost as cold as ice, or almost as 
hot as a fire coal, and we are understood di- 
rectly." 

" Yes, I see that." 

"Well, then, now let us mention a few 



LEARNING TO THINK. 25 

other things. Here is a bullet : feel it, and 
tell me what you think of it." 

" It pushes down against my hand — it feels 
heavy." 

" Now feel this bit of cork ; it is very dif- 
ferent from the bullet." 

" Yes ! It does not push against my hand." 

" Well, then, it must be light ; nothing can 
be clearer than this, that substances are very 
different from each other. One is hard, an- 
other soft ; one hot, another cold ; one heavy, 
another light ; and so on. So that, as I told 
you, every substance has its particular pro- 
perties or qualities. It is the knowledge of 
these qualities which enables mankind to find 
out how these substances may be made use- 
ful. Perhaps you think I am talking very 
learnedly, but all I tell you has been told me 
by Mr. White." 

" How does a knowledge of a thing being 
hard or soft, heavy or light, help people in 
making it useful ?" 

"A knowledge of the qualities and pro- 
perties of substances is the foundation of 
almost all the conveniences, comforts, and 
luxuries of life, and I will tell you in what 
way. The most useful things in life are food, 
clothing, fire, and shelter. If we had no 
knowledge of the quality of food, we should 
3 



26 LEARNING TO THINK. 

be continually injuring ourselves by eating 
that which would make us ill ; for a man can- 
not live on grass, nor a horse on flesh, nor a 
cow on fish." 

" I see that." 

" If we had no knowledge of the quality 
of wool and flax, we might be almost melted 
in summer by wearing nothing but flannel, 
and nearly perished in winter by wearing 
nothing but linen." 

"I understand now — I see what you 
mean." 

" We should be sadly off for fire if we 
made it of straw, and put stones on it for 
fuel ; but a knowledge of the qualities of 
wood and coal enables us to make up a good 
fire at any time." 

u Very good, indeed. I wonder I did not 
see this before." 

" It was because you had not learned to 
think of such things. If we built our houses 
of unburnt clay, the walls would be damp 
in wet weather, and in dry weather they 
would crack ; and if our roofs were covered 
with brown paper, instead of slates and tiles, 
the first heavy shower would find its way 
through them." 

"I see now that it is very necessary to 
know the qualities of things. But how am 



LEARNING TO THINK. 27 

I to find them out, if I never saw the things 
before ?" 

" By the use of your senses — by observa- 
tion, thought, and experiment: but it will 
be time enough to attend to this when you 
know the qualities of the things that are 
common around you. As you found out 
that the flint was hard, the bullet heavy, and 
the cork light, by feeling them, so you would 
find out these qualities in other substances in 
the same way. One thing will surprise you 
in learning to think, and that is, to find that 
things have so many more qualities than you 
suppose they have. Here is a halfpenny: 
you could not, perhaps, tell me more than 
five or six of its qualities; but I, having 
learned to think more than you have, could 
tell you twenty of them." 

" Twenty qualities in a halfpenny !" 

" Yes ; and more than twenty, to say no- 
thing of its uses. Do you know the use of a 
halfpenny ?" 

" To buy a halfpennyworth of ginger-bread 
with, or a piece of packthread." 

" Ay $ and it may be put also to other uses. 
A halfpenny roll, or a halfpennyworth of milk, 
given to a starving person, might save a life ; 
and a halfpenny book, setting forth the ad- 
vantages of piety, might be the means, with 



28 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



God's blessing, of changing the mind of a 
thoughtless reader. But our time is gone, 
so we must now separate. Come again to- 
morrow; I shall expect you at the same 
hour." 








LEARNING TO THINK. 29 






CHAPTER IV. 




[OW do you do, Henry ? I see 
you have a great many things 
on the table ready. It is very 
kind of you to teach me to 
think ; but you have a very dull 
scholar." 

" Oh no, Charles ; I do not think so. When 
you are a little more accustomed to the thing, 
you will get on faster. Rome was not built 
in a day ; and I do not know that, at first, I 
learned more rapidly than you do. I remem- 
ber once reading two lines on the subject of 
writing ; they were these : — 

* He that in writing would improve, 
Must first with writing fall in love/ 

Now, if you should fall in love with thinking, 
you will find it not only easy, but also one 
of the most pleasant things in the world." 

" I will tell you how I think I should get 
on faster than by answering puzzling ques- 
tions. If pou would let me know the way 
3 * 



30 LEARNING TO THINK. 

in which you begin to think of any thing, it 
would help me on nicely." 

" Tell me what you mean, as plainly as 
you can, and I will do all in my power to help 
you." 

" Why, here are several things on the table. 
Now, instead of asking me questions, take 
one of them, and think about it yourself. 
Here is a pin, and here is a pipe ; now put 
the pipe before you, and let me know how 
you began to think about it, and that will 
teach me, perhaps, how to think of other 
things." 

" A very good thought. Well ! here is the 
pipe ; and now I will think about it aloud that 
you may hear me, instead of thinking to my- 
self. Let me first think of the qualities and 
parts of the pipe, and in doing this, my five 
senses, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and 
feeling will help me : you know we have five 
senses." 

" Yes, I'know that ; besides, you have just 
told me what they are." 

* You must not forget them in learning to 
think. My ear tells me that the pipe makes 
no noise, it is quiet. My eye tells me that it 
is clean, white, glazed, hollow, and dry ; and 
that it has a long neck, and a cup or bowl. 
If I smell it, it has little or no scent. If I put 



LEARNING TO THINK. 31 

it to my tongue, it has hardly any taste. 
With my fingers, I feel that it is smooth, light, 
and hard. And when I feel it with my moist 
lips, I know directly that it is slightly glutin- 
ous, or sticky. Besides all this, if 1 put it in 
the fire, it will not melt ; and if I break it, I 
discover that it is brittle." 

"How many things you have thought 
about already." 

" After the qualities Qf the pipe come its 
uses. It is used for the v $firpose of smoking 
tobacco, and it is suited for this purpose. If 
it were made of wood, it would be burned ; 
if of lead, it would be too heavy : and beside 
that, it would melt. If it were formed of 
gold or silver, it would be too expensive ; and 
if made of brass, copper, or iron, it would by 
little and little, getjeo hot to hold in the hand. 
If the bowl were larger, it would hold too 
much tobacco ; if smaller, it would contain 
too little. If the neck or tuBe were thinner, 
it would not allow room for sufficient smoke 
to pass up ; and if it were thicker, the smoke 
would come up faster than it is wanted. So 
that you see a pipe is just what it should 
be." 

" Yes ! and I see, simple as a pipe is, that 
there is a good deal of thought required in 
the making of it." 



32 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Very true. It is made of a white clay, 
and formed in a mould, with a wire inside 
the neck ; and it is burned in a kiln or fur- 
nace, and then glazed over. But having 
thought of the parts, the qualities, and use 
of the pipe, I will now think of those things 
which it calls to my mind and memory. 
These, Mr. White tells me, are called associ- 
ations." 

" What can a pipe call to your mind ?" 

"Much that is very interesting. First, I 

think of the number of people employed in 

pipe-making. What a sight it must be to see 

a kiln quite full of red-hot pipes ! Then I 

fancy that I see children assorting them, and 

the men packing them, and then they are 

P\ >^ dispersed all over the kingdom by wagons, 

^■-^ coaches, and railways ; and some are sent 

^abroad by ships. How many persons are 

there employed in connexion with pipes ! 

From this view of the subject, we may learn 

that God's lesser gifts may become comforts 

or curses, just as they are used or abused.'' 

" How much you are making out of a to 
bacco pipe ! I could not have thought all 
this could have been said of it." 

" And now comes the thought more inter- 
esting than all. Some of the tobacco smoked 
in the pipe grows in the West Indies, where 



LEARNING TO THINK. 33 

for many years it was cultivated by slaves ; 
but England, as you know, has set the slaves 
at liberty. A great quantity is grown in some 
of the States of America. Well, these liber- 
ated slaves, who were once treated brutally, 
and kept in ignorance, are now in a fair way 
to be treated kindly, and to be taught to read 
God's word, to believe in Jesus Christ, and 
to look forward to heaven when they die. I 
never see a pipe without thinking of the ne- 
groes who cultivate the tobacco that is 
smoked in it, and without feeling thankful that 
there are now infant schools for the negro 
children. Thus you see, that the simplest 
thing, when you have learned to think, may 
become interesting, by reflecting on its qual- 
ities, uses, and associations" 

" I thought the pipe was a very bad sub T 
ject to think on, but it has turned out other- 
wise. Would any thing else set you thinking 
as much as the pipe has ?" 

" You may try, if you like. You see there 
are plenty of things on the table. Choose 
Which you will, and I will think aloud about 
it, in the same manner that I have of the 
pipe." 

"Take this brass pin, then; but I do no- 
expect you can make much of such a com- 
mon little thing." 



34 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Common things are often the most use- 
ful; but we shall see. Give me the pin! 
There, now it lies before me. Take notice 
that I shall begin to think of it in the same 
way that I did of the pipe. First come its 
parts and qualities, next its uses, and, lastly, 
its associations." 

" Ay, I well remember these." 

" Well, now, I will think aloud. This pin 
has a straight, taper body, a sharp point, and 
a little round head. I see, too, that it shines ; 
and when I feel it with my finger, I find it 
hard and quite smooth. But why has it got 
a point ? That must be that it may be pushed 
through any thing. Why has it a head ? Oh, 
that it may not hurt the finger in pushing it ; 
and that it may not fall through the cloth, or 
other substance, into which it may be stuck. 
Why is it smooth ? That it may pass easily 
where it is pushed. What is the use of a 
pin ? To fasten clothes ; to keep drawers tidy, 
by pinning up neatly articles of different 
kinds ; to fasten up small paper parcels ; and 
to help mantua-makers in their work." 

"Come, you have said every thing now 
about a pin that can be said ; for you have 
gone from one end of it to the other." 

"You shall hear me go on thinking. 
What is the pin made of? It is made of 



LEARNING TO THINK. 35 

brass, though pins are usually made of a 
mixture of different metals. Brass is copper 
mixed with another metal : this is dug out of 
the earth, so that pickaxes, spades, borers, 
baskets, ropes, pulleys, wheels, and machin- 
ery, are all necessary, as well as men and 
horses, to get it out of the ground. After 
that, it is melted in a large blast-furnace, and 
purified in different ways/' 

" What ! is there all this trouble about a 
pin ?" 

" Yes, and a great deal more ; but I will 
go on thinking. At last, the brass is ready 
to be made into a pin. One person draws 
it into wire ; another makes it straight ; an- 
other cuts it into pieces of a proper length ; 
another sharpens the point ; another grinds it 
ready for the head ; another makes the head ; 
another puts the head on ; another sticks the 
pins in rows on paper ; and another wraps 
them up in parcels." 

" Why, this is more wonderful than the 
pipe." 

"Were I to add all that a pin brings to 
my mind, all its associations, you would be 
still more surprised. The men employed in 
sinking the pit, working the mine, and puri- 
fying the metal at the blast-furnace, with all 
those occupied in drawing, straightening, 



36 LEARNING TO THINK* 

cutting, pointing, grinding, heading, sticking 
in rows, and wrapping up the pins,have bodies 
to provide for, and souls that will live for ever. 
I can fancy that I see some of them idle, un- 
godly, and wretched ; and others industrious, 
pious, and happy. God made the metal of 
which the pin is formed, and gave man the 
power to make it into a pin ; so that in this 
little useful instrument, we may see God's 
goodness, as plainly as we can see man's in- 
genuity." 

" It does not signify, Henry, but I will do 
my best to learn to think, that I may see all 
these things just as you do, and be as wise." 

" Ay, and I hope a great deal wiser. But 
you must have a care of not becoming proud 
and conceited. Mr. White tells me, that a 
little conceit will lessen the value of a great 
deal of knowledge ; let us both then be on 
our guard." 

" I shall think about the pipe and the pin 
till I come again." 

" Remember, six o'clock is the time for you 
to be here. Farewell !" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 37 




CHAPTER V. 

AM a little after my time to-night, 
Henry ; I had to call on George 
Johnson, who is employed by 
farmer Smith. I found him 
with his children around him, 
sitting at his cottage door, and his wife sitting 
at work by his side. Though he is a poor 
man, I think he is very happy, and his house 
is always so clean that it is a pleasure to look 
at it. I stopped a short time talking to him, 
so that has made me over my time." 

" Never mind, Charles ; let us try to make 
up for it, by going to business at once. You 
see that there are many things on the table. 
You must now tell me the qualities of them. 
Take up this piece of loaf sugar. What do 
you think of it? What qualities can you 
find in it ?" 

" It is white ; and, beside that, it is rough." 
" What do you mean by rough ?" 
<• I mean that it feels rough. It rubs 
against my finger when I rub against it." 
4 



38 LEARNING TO THINK. 

"Very good. What other property has 
it ? Put it to your tongue." 

" Oh, it is sweet." 

"Yes, but when you find out a quality, 
you should describe what that quality is, and 
it will prevent my asking questions, and save 
time. What do you mean by sweet ?" 

" I mean that it makes me smack my lips 
pleasantly. " 

" Taste this lump of alum; try if that will 
not make you smack your lips too." 

" Yes it does, but it is quite sour. It makes 
me null a face." 

" I see that you understand well the dif- 
ference between sweet and sour. What is 
sour makes you pull a face ; that is very well 
explained. Now listen to me. There are 
many qualities which you may find out at 
once, by a glance of the eye, a touch of the 
finger, or a taste of the tongue ; but there are 
other qualities which are not so soon found 
out, yet as you make progress in thinking, 
your knowledge will constantly increase. 
The lump of white sugar you have tasted is 
soluble. Do you know what that means ?" 

" No, I do not." 

"Well, it means that it will dissolve or 
melt in water and other liquids. My brother 
put a small lump of marble this morning in 



LEARNING TO THINK. 39 

my tea-cup, at breakfast, by way of joke, and 
I, mistaking it for a lump of sugar, kept turn- 
ing it about with my teaspoon : finding that 
it did not melt, and knowing, of course, that 
sugar was soluble, I took it out of my cup to 
examine it more attentively; my brother 
burst into a loud laugh, and then I found out 
what it was. Marble is not soluble." 

" That was a good joke, however." 

" My father said it was rather a dangerous 
one ; for I might have put it into my mouth 
and swallowed it. We should be very care- 
ful in our jokes, for many a sad accident has 
occurred in that way. Well, I dare say that 
you would be able to find out, at once, 
whether a thing were hard or soft, heavy or 
light, rough or smooth, wet or dry, full or 
empty, straight or crooked, short or long, 
sweet or sour, tender or tough, thin or thick ; 
and all these qualities you may understand, 
though it might puzzle you to explain some 
of them : but there are many others of which 
I dare say you know but little." 

" What are they ? Please to mention some 
of them." 

" We will speak of them some other time ; 
but, just to give you an instance : a piece of 
loaf sugar is solid, hard, white, sweet, spark- 
ling, and brittle. It is soluble, too, and I 



40 LEARNING TO THINK. 

have told you what is the meaning of 
this word 5 but when I tell you it is opaque 
and fusible, I question if you know what I 
mean." 

" I am sure I do not." 

u Opaque means that you cannot see the 
light through it, as you can through glass, 
which is transparent, or clear enough to let 
the light through it. See ; here is a candle, 
which I will light with a lucifer match. 
There ; when I put the end of the lump of 
sugar in the candle, it melts. Now, that 
which melts in water, or in any liquid, is so- 
luble ; and that which melts in the candle or 
fire, is fusible." 

"Oh, I shall not forget that. But now it 
has come into my head, will you please to let 
me hear you think about a mahogany table. 
I tried to think about it to-day, and I" made 
out that it was hard, and had four legs ; that 
its use was to stand in a room ; and it put 
me in mind of my maps and books, for I 
often have them on the table." 

"Pretty well for a beginning. We are 
much assisted when we think on any subject 
by the knowledge we have obtained, by the 
judgment we possess, and also by our mem- 
ory &nd fancy When you have more know- 



LEARNING TO THINK. 41 

ledge, you will think more freely, and take in 
a wider compass." 

" But do let me hear you think about a 
mahogany table. There is one before us 
now, and I should so like to know if you can 
think of any thing more than I have done." 

u Well, it shall be as you wish. The. ma- 
hogany table is hard, solid, opaque, smooth, 
and inflammable, that is, easily set in a flame ; 
and its principal parts are its surfaces, edges, 
corners, tops, flaps, drawers, legs, and feet. 
It is movable, and can be made to spread 
out wide, as well as to fold up closer togeth- 
er ; its use is to bear the things which are 
placed upon it for our convenience, especially 
our food. And now come the things we as- 
sociate with it, or its associations : the mahog- 
any tree does not grow in England ; it grows 
in the West Indies, a part of the world famous 
for hurricanes. No such fiery flashes of light- 
ning, no such fearful claps of thunder, to be 
seen and heard as those in the West Indies. 
I can fancy the mahogany tree, at one time 
waving gracefully, with half a dozen ma- 
caws and parrots on its branches; and, at 
another, bent to and fro, and almost torn up 
from the ground by the roaring storm." 

" I should not like those storms at all." 

" I dare say not. The sight of a mahogany 
4* 



42 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



table should make us thankful that there are 
no such hurricanes in England as there are 
where the mahogany tree grows." 

" Very true." 

"In the West Indies, or rather on the 
Spanish main, thirty or forty persons in a 



Hn • mm' \ ■ 




gang, go into the woods with a hunter among 
them. The hunter climbs a tall tree, and 
looks around him, and when he spies any 
branches covered with leaves of a ruddy 
yellow, he knows that they belong to the 



LEARNING TO THINK. 43 

mahogany tree. He leads his gang to the 
place, and they all set to work to cut down 
the tree, to strip off its bark, to saw it into 
proper lengths, to lay it on timber carriages, 
and to drag it, with the assistance of oxen, 
down to the river. The flaring of the torches, 
(for they travel by night,) the rattling of the 
chains, the crashing of the brushwood, and 
the hallooing of the men, would astonish a 
stranger." 

" And a mahogany table puts you in mind 
of all this." 

" Yes, and of a great deal more. The tim- 
ber is floated in rafts down the river 5 it is 
then put on ship board ; and after that, on its 
arrival in England, follows the sawing, turn- 
ing, planing, carving, and polishing, to form 
it into a table." 

" You have come to the end at last." 

" Think of the wholesome food and dainty 
meats that have been placed on the mahogany 
table ! The toast and coffee at breakfast, the 
joints and puddings at dinner, the muffins 
and crumpets at tea, and the cold fowls and 
tarts at supper ! Think of the family gather- 
ings, and of the large old Bible laid on the table, 
morning and evening, when the knees of all 
around are bent in prayer, and their hearts 
arise in praise to God for all his mercies, espe- 



44 LEARNING TO THINK. 

cially for the gift of Jesus Christ, his Son, to 
die for us sinners. Think of all these things, 
and the mahogany table will not be found a 
useless subject." 

" I never heard the like ! I would give all 
my pocket money to be able to think as you 
do." 

" Oh, cheer up, and you will be surprised 
at yourself yet. But our time is gone. Well, 
you will come again next Monday." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 45 




CHAPTER VI. 

^ERE I am, Henry, five minutes 
before my time ; and now, per- 
haps, you will tell me of some 
of the qualities that I do not un- 
derstand." 

" I will, Charles ; for I want you very much 
to get on in learning to think : but first let 
me show you a letter that my dear mother 
left on my table for me to read." 

" Oh, yes, show it me ! what is it about ?" 
" Why, she is afraid lest I should grow 
proud because I know a little more than you 
do." 

" Is she ? I never thought you proud." 
" My dear mother is a wise and good wo- 
man, and knows more of the human heart 
than you or I do; but you shall hear her 
letter. 

" ' Dear Henry, 

'As you have undertaken to instruct a 



46 LEARNING TO THINK. 

young friend in learning to think, let me 
affectionately warn you to beware of high- 
mindedness and self-conceit, for they some- 
times glide into the heart unawares. Instead 
of thinking how much more you know than 
your young friend knows, call to mind how 
much less your knowledge is than that of 
those who give you instruction. As pride is 
folly, so he who is not humble cannot be wise. 
This advice is given you by your ever-anxious 
and affectionate 

' Mother/ 

" So you see, Charles, that while I teach 
you to learn to think, I have something to 
think of myself at the same time. But now 
let us proceed : — Concave, means like the in- 
side of a basin ; that tea-cup is concave. Con- 
vex, is like the outside of a globe ; that ball 
is convex. Mineral, means from the mine ; 
that bit of iron-stone is a mineral. Artificial, 
means made by art, not natural ; that peg-top 
is artificial." 

" Oh ! that reminds me that you have ne- 
ver told me why a peg-top spins, and a hum- 
ming-top makes a noise." 

" All in good time ; I will not forget to tell 
you, never fear ; but let us go on. Odorous, 
means giving out an odour, or scent; that 



LEARNING TO THINK. 47 

piece of camphor is odorous. Pungent, is 
pricking, or sharp to the taste, like mustard 
or pepper. Elastic, is springy ; that bit of 
Indian rubber is elastic. Glutinous, is sticky, 
like glue. Medicinal, means healing, or re- 
storing ; any thing that makes the sick well. 
Flexible, is easily bent, like that little switch. 
Shall you remember any of these ?" 

" Yes, I think I shall remember them all ; 
so please to go on." 

a You shall have a few more qualities then, 
but not many. Caustic, means burning ; vi- 
triol and aquafortis are caustic. Fibrous, is 
having fibres or threads, like the root of a 
tree. Astringent, is binding, or drawing to- 
gether ; the bark of a tree, used to tan leather, 
is an astringent. Angular, means having an- 
gles, or corners; that lucifer match-box is 
angular. Spongy, is being like a sponge, full 
of small holes, and capable of sucking up wa- 
ter 5 that bit of flannel is spongy. Ductile, 
means easily put into other forms ; the piece 
of lead there is ductile. Tenacious, is holding 
fast together, like a piece of hard wood that 
you cannot easily split to pieces. Malleable, 
means capable of being spread out by ham- 
mering ; gold and silver are malleable. Di- 
visible, is capable of being divided into 
parts 4 an orange is divisible, And now for 



48 LEARNING TO THINK, 

the last, for I am afraid of tiring you ; evanes- 
cent, means vanishing, or remaining only a 
short time ; a cloud is evanescent. A know- 
ledge of these and other qualities you will 
find very useful in learning to think." 

u I hope I shall remember most of them." 

" Is a candle natural or artificial ?" 

" Why, artificial. It is made by art, and 
therefore it cannot be natural." 

" Very well, Charles, very well. Is a pen 
natural or artificial ?" 

" Natural, for it grows on a goose." 

" The quill is natural, but the pen is arti 
ficial." 

" Oh, yes, so it is. I forgot that it was 
made with a penknife." 

" What form is this piece of egg-shell, look- 
ing at the inside ?" 

" Convex — oh no ! I forgot, it is concave ; 
the outside of it is convex : I remember now."" 

" Suppose you were to drop a cup of water 
on the floor and break the cup, how would 
you dry up the water ? would you use a piece 
of wood or coal ?" 

" No, for they would not suck it up at all ; 
it must be something spongy to suck the water 
up ; a piece of sponge, or flannel, or cloth, or 
a mop." 

" Is a piece of Indian rubber malleable ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 49 

" No, it will not bear beating out with a 
hammer, I think, and so it cannot be mal- 
leable ; you said it was elastic, or springy. " 

" You remember these qualities very well ; 
by and by your knowledge will be useful to 
you. This morning, I met with some re- 
marks which will suit us ; I have the book 
here, and will read them. 'Look at the 
chair on which you sit, it is the result of con- 
siderable reflection and ingenuity. A man 
may sit upon the ground, but it is more con- 
venient to have something higher to sit upon. 
When out of doors, he might sit upon a large 
stone, or on the trunk of a tree, and when in 
the house, upon the stairs ; but as he wishes 
at times to move his seat from one place to 
another, a block of wood would be an im- 
provement. The solid block, however, is too 
heavy to have its position altered without 
trouble, and reflection suggests the advantage 
of a joint stool ; but then the back and arms 
of a man need support, and a joint-stool is 
transformed into a chair. The chair after- 
wards is ornamented, that beauty and useful- 
ness may be united.' Thus reflection will 
give you a kind of amusing and instructive 
history of a chair." 

" I like that very much What would I not 
5 



50 LEARNING TO THINK. 

do, to be able to think of every thing about 
me in that way !" 

" The same book has also the following 
observations on a wheelbarrow. < If a boy 
sees a wheelbarrow, he may pursue the same 
train of thought. The use of a wheelbarrow 
is to enable a person to remove burdens from 
one place to another more easily than he 
could do it without such an assistance ; and 
ingenuity and thought are necessary to con- 
struct it. It must be of a convenient size ; 
for, if too large, it will be in the way ; and if 
too small, it will not carry a sufficient burden. 
It must be made of durable materials ; but if 
it be too strong, its weight will render it use- 
less ; and, if too weak, it will break down. 
When the proper material, and size, and 
strength are agreed on, it must have handles 
with which to push it along, and feet to bear 
it when it is not being moved. After all 
these things, it will be no better than a mere 
box, till it has a wheel attached to it, that it 
may be easily moved. With such reflections 
as these, a boy will find amusement and in- 
struction in a wheelbarrow.' " 

" If any thing would make me think, such 
remarks as these would. I should like to 
read that book." 

" It is not mine, and therefore I cannot 



LEARNING TO THINK. 51 

lend it to you. There are two other short 
pieces in the book, of the same kind ; shall I 
read them ?" 

'• Yes ! yes ! read them both." 

u They are very short ! this is the first of 
them, and it is just the very thing to encou- 
rage thought in a boy. 6 If a boy regards his 
clothes, the use of them is to keep him warm, 
and to defend him from the inclemency of the 
weather, without restraining the use of his 
limbs. They must, therefore, be strong, du- 
rable, soft, and flexible, and not deprive the 
body of heat Now, iron is strong, leather 
is durable, silk is soft, and muslin is flexible ; 
but neither iron, leather, silk, nor muslin will 
make a boy a comfortable jacket. It must 
be made of some material which has all these 
necessary qualities united, and that material 
is woolen cloth/ This is the other little bit 
that pleased me. l Every boy knows that 
the use of an umbrella is to keep us from 
the wet, but not one boy in a hundred gives 
himself the trouble to reflect on the necessary 
qualities of this useful appendage to our com- 
fort. It must be of a proper texture and 
form to throw off the rain. It must be of a 
suitable size, or it will either not cover us, or 
it will inconvenience others : it must be strong 
and elastic, to resist the blast; it must be 



52 LEARNING TO THINK. 

light, to be carried without labour; and it 
must be portable, and capable of being com- 
pressed into a small compass." 

" Capital ! I wish I had begun to learn to 
think a year ago." 

" I am glad to hear you say so ; for Mr. 
White tells me, that there is not half so much 
difficulty in teaching any one to think, as 
there is in making him willing and desirous 
to be taught. He says, we are placed in a 
world of wonders, that angels might have 
pleasure to gaze on : and that when we do 
not use our understanding, to turn it to good 
account, and to admire God's beautiful crea- 
tion, we despise the gifts of our heavenly 
Father, instead of spreading abroad his glory. 
I must now leave you till to-morrow." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 53 




CHAPTER VII. 

AM glad you are come, Charles , 
for I have not a great deal of 
time to spare to-night. Come, 
take your seat." 
" Let us begin directly, Henry ; 
I remember the qualities that you described 
to me." 

" Do you remember that I showed you a 
letter written to me by my mother ?" 

" Oh yes, very well ! — it was to tell you 
not to be conceited." 

" You are right ; and now I have a short 
note from Mr. White, on the same subject." 
" Have you ? Do let me hear it." 
" It is this : 

" i Dear Henry, 

6 Some time ago, a young man set up a shop 

in a village, stored with all manner of useful 

commodities, but when the villagers went to 

make their purchases, the young man was so 

5* 



54 LEARNING TO THINK, 

pert and saucy, that the people would not 
put up with it. " Your articles are good," 
said they, " but your ill-behaviour is unbear- 
able ; and if we cannot have the former with- 
out the latter, we will have nothing to do with 
you." 

" ' Now, thus it is with a quick, but con- 
ceited person ; his conceit renders his quick- 
ness almost useless. Have a care then, my 
dear Henry, that you are never conceited/ 

" You see, Charles, how necessary it is that 
1 should be on my guard against conceit. 
But now let me ask you, what are the three 
things to be attended to in thinking of any 
thing ?" 

"First, its qualities; next, its uses; and, 
last of all, its associations." 

"Very good. When I asked you some 
time ago what you thought of a piece of 
flint, you replied, i I do not know what to 
think about it ; it is a piece of flint, and I 
cannot think anything else of it.' You would 
not give me such an answer as that now, 
would you ?" 

" No, indeed, I would not." 

" Take up the piece of flint again, then, for 
there it lies, and let us hear what you think 
about it. We shall then see if you are mak- 
ing progress in learning to think." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 55 

" I will do my best 5 but mind, you must 
not laugh at me." 

" Oh ! a good-tempered laugh is very well 
hi its place ; it is the ill-natured laugh that 
does mischief. If I laugh it will be in a 
good-humoured way, and that will not hurt 
you. Mr. White says, we are never safe 
from being led astray by our companions till 
we have learned to say No, and till we can 
bear being laughed at. But come, now for 
the piece of flint. Let me hear what you 
think about it." 

" Flint is hard, heavy, cold, opaque, solid, 
and natural. Its uses are, to strike fire with, 
by means of a piece of steel ; to be put in the 
cock of a gun ; and to pave the streets and 
repair the roads." 

" Very good, indeed. What else have you 
to say ?" 

" Why, it puts me in mind how useful it 
is to strike a light with in the dark ; and it 
makes me think of soldiers, who have flints 
in their muskets ; and it reminds me of all the 
coaches, and wagons, and carts, and wheel- 
barrows, that roll along over the flint stones 
in the streets." 

" Depend upon it, Charles, you will be a 
thinker some day ; for you are getting on fa- 
mously. This is better than saying, that * a 



56 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



piece of flint is a piece of flint ; and I cannot 
think any thing else of it.' " 
" Yes; that was a poor answer." 
" Let me now show you how a more lively 
fancy, and more general knowledge, would 
help you in thinking ; let me show you how 
you might have turned your thoughts to ad- 
vantage. When it occurred to you how use- 
ful a flint was to strike a light with in the 



uenL 




dark, you might have called to mind the 
goodness of God in giving, even to a flint 
stone, a quality so useful to mankind. You 
might have thought of the blessing of light as 
opposed to darkness ; and that would have 
led you to pity the poor blind, and to feel 
more thankful for the gift of your eye-sight 



LEARNING TO THINK. 57 

What a loss it would be to us, if we could no 
longer see the clear blue sky, the bright sun, 
the coloured rainbow, the green fields and 
trees, and the faces of those who love us \" 

" Yes, I ought to have thought of all these 
things." 

" Then, when the flint reminded you of 
soldiers, while you thought of the horrors of 
war, you might have called to mind the 
blessings of peace, and that promise of Holy 
Scripture, ' They shall beat their swords into 
ploughshares, and their spears into pruning- 
hooks : nation shall not lift up sword against 
nation, neither shall they learn war any 
more/ Isa. ii. 4." 

" You seem to think of every thing." 

"And when the carriages, and wagons, 
and carts came into your head, you should 
have remembered the good services of that 
useful animal, the horse ; and considered for 
a moment the great advantages of machinery, 
which enables us, instead of carrying about 
heavy burdens on our backs, to have these 
burdens conveyed for us, and ourselves car- 
ried into the bargain. Common things may 
be made a source of entertainment and know- 
ledge. A chair may stand as a useful moni- 
tor ; a jacket may cover a suitable reflection ; 
an umbrella may unfold an observation of 



58 LEARNING TO THINK. 

value ; and a wheelbarrow may carry a 
maxim of usefulness. Such reflections will 
lead a boy to think on the construction of 
other things, from a mouse-trap to a steam- 
engine, from the twisting of a rope to the 
building of a ship, and he will find that all 
are constructed on the common principle of 
gaining an advantage in the easiest, the 
cheapest, and the best manner. 

• When every thing that strikes the view 
Gives birth to some reflection new ; 
From sea to sea, from shore to shore, 
This world has charms unknown before.' " 

" If a boy be not. accustomed to reflect, he 
cannot understand how much knowledge 
supplies our necessities, mitigates our troubles, 
and increases our happiness ; but if he be 
given to reflection, he will easily be made to 
comprehend this. A knowledge of agricul- 
ture provides us with food, and an acquaint- 
ance with manufactures supplies us with 
clothing. Greatly are we indebted to a know- 
ledge of physic and surgery. The gigantic 
powers of the steam-engine confer great ad- 
vantages ; and we cannot limit the good ef- 
fects that the art of printing has spread abroad 
in the world. The safety-lamp, preserving 
the life of the miner, and the gas-lights, which 
beautify our streets and habitations, demand 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



59 



our admiration. When we examine the mi- 
croscope, which reveals millions of creatures 
before unknown ; the telescope, bringing re- 
mote and countless worlds nearer our obser- 
vation ; and the telegraph, conveying infor- 
mation almost instantaneously to distant parts; 
when we see the ship uniting together the in- 
habitants of the east and the west, the north 
and the south, and inspect the compass which 
directs her in her passage over the trackless 
deep ; when we regard the light-house, bra- 





ving the mountainous billows, and warning 
the tempest-tost mariner to escape from dan- 
ger ; when we gaze on the life-boat, breasting 
the wind and the tide, and ploughing its way 



60 LEARNING TO THINK. 

through the foaming breakers, redeeming hu- 

qian beings from destruction ; when we see 

these tilings, we must be blindly ignorant not 

to acknowledge the advantages of reflection 

Ny^juid science, and guiltily ungrateful if we do 

~N^ not devote ourselves to His service, who 

formed man out of the dust, breathed the 

breath of life into his nostrils, and gave him 

\ every faculty he possesses." 

" Charles, I told you that I had not much 
time to-night to spare, but, if you think 
well, the next time we meet, I will make 
amends for it by explaining to you why a 
N hoop bowls along, a peg-top spins, a ball 
X bounces, a humming-top makes a noise, and 
a kite flies in the air." 

" Capital ! capital ! These are of all things, 
what I want to know. Depend upon it, I 
shall be here in good time. Good bye ; I will 
not hinder you a minute now, for I see you 
in a hurry." 
i^od bye, Charles ; I will be ready for 
voiv 




LEARNING TO THINK. 



61 




CHAPTER VIII. 




OW for it, Henry ! Here I am, 
and it wants a quarter to six. 
Now I shall know why my 
hoop bowls along, when a hand- 
kerchief will not stir; why a 
peg-top spins ; a ball bounces ; a humming- 
top makes a noise 5 and a kite flies in the air ; 
and why a battledoor will not fly like a kite : 
for I dare say you can tell me." 

a First, let me give you another instance 
of the value of learning to think, Charles. 
When I first spoke to you, you seemed to care 
nothing at all about it ; so I thought to my- 
self, ' If I can say something about his hoop, 
his peg-top, his ball, his humming-top, his 
6 



62 LEARNING TO THINK. 

whipping-top, and his kite, it will, perhaps, 
lead him on to want to know more about the 
matter/ " 

" And did you speak about them for this 
purpose ?" 

"I did, just for the purpose of making you 
long to learn to think ; and you see that, by 
forethought, I have brought about what I 
wanted." 

" Capital ! capital ! But now for the hoop • 
that comes first, you know. Why does it rur 
along so ?" 

" Now, listen, then, very attentively. Mr. 
White tells me, that there are certain laws in 
nature which are universal : that is, they 
always act in the same manner one time as 
well as another, unless they are interfered 
with. For instance, it is a law of nature that 
water will find its level. If you let water run 
out of one pit into another which is a little 
lower, it will run on until it has risen in the 
lower pit as high as the upper one, and then 
it will stop." 

" I think I understand that." 

" It is also a law of nature, that a stone cast 
into the air will fall to the earth. And now I 
will mention another law, which has some- 
thing to do with the hoop as it runs along the 
ground." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 63 

« Now for it !" 

" It is a law of nature, that matter, or every 
substance around us, will always remain in 
the same state in which it is, unless forced 
into another state. A stone lying on the 
ground would lie there for ever, if nothing 
moved it ; and a bullet, fired out of a gun, 
would fly forward for ever, if nothing stopped 
it." 

" Would it really ?" 

"Yes; and, in like manner, your hoop, 
when once set in motion, would run on for 
ever, if nothing prevented it." 

" But what does prevent it ? There is 
nothing stops it, unless it happens to run 
against a wall or a post." 

" There you are wrong. Every pebble it 
meets with, however small, prevents it, in 
some degree, from running on as it otherwise 
would do. When you drive it through mud, 
or water, it will not go far without stopping, 
because the mud and the water stop its pro- 
gress. When you drive it over grass, it is 
the same ; the grass stops it." 

" Yes, I know that ; but when I drive it on 
Droad flag stones, it runs along smoothly, and 
nothing stops it then." 

u In this case, as you say, it runs on faster ; 
but still, to say nothing of the wind which it 



64 LEARNING TO THINK. 

may have to push through, it rubs against 
the ground, and this rubbing, or friction, as 
it is called, makes it, if you do not strike it 
again, gradually go slower and slower till it 
stops. The reason^ then, why your hoop, 
when once set in motion, runs on so famously, 
is because it has so little friction, so small a 
part of it rubs against the ground. And the 
reason why a pocket handkerchief will not 
run along at all, is because it has so much 
friction, or rubs so much against the ground." 

" Well, I am glad I know at last ; but why 
does my narrow iron hoop run along better 
than my broad wooden one ?" 

" For this simple reason : it is heavier, ac- 
cording to its bulk, and has less friction. Your 
broad hoop has two or three times as much 
wind to push through, when it meets the 
wind ; and, being two or three times broader, 
it must of necessity rub more against the 
ground than the other." 

" I understand, then, that when I hare once 
knocked my hoop along with my stick, it rims 
on, according to the law you spoke of, until 
the rubbing or friction stops it by degrees." 

" Exactly so ; and it is just the same with 
the peg-top. The string, by being wrapped 
round it, forces it to spin when you dash it 
on the ground, and there it would spin for 



LEARNING TO THINK. 65 

ever, or until it wore itself away, if the fric- 
tion against the air and the ground did not 
gradually stop it." 

" That is just like the hoop. I understand 
it now, thoroughly ; so please to explain why 
a ball bounces." 

" Do yon remember what elasticity is ?" 

" Oh, yes ! That is one of the qualities that 
you told me of: it is springiness." 

" What do you mean by springiness ?" 

" I mean the quality of springing back again 
when a thing is pushed out of its place." 

" Very good ! Now here is a bit of Indian 
rubber. If I stretch it out, the moment I 
loose it, it springs into its place again ; and 
if I push it hard with my finger, and dent it 
in, the instant I take away my finger, the 
dented part springs up to its former position. 
Thus it is with the ball, which is elastic. The 
blow against the ground dents it in ; and its 
elasticity, or sudden effort to force itself into 
its former round form, makes it spring into 
the air." 

" Capital ! I shall never forget why a 
ball bounces now. The humming-top comes 
next." 

" Yes. Now for the humming-top. You 

must know that all solid bodies vibrate or 

shake when they are struck, and this vibration 

6* 



66 LEARNING TO THINK. 

makes the air around them vibrate too ; as 
soon as this vibrating air reaches our ears, it 
produces the sensation of sound. If you 
strike a drum with a drumstick, the tightened 
parchment begins to vibrate or shake; and 
if you put a bit of paper on the drum, you 
will see it tremble : this is a positive proof of 
its vibration. If you put water in a glass, and 
rub round the edge of the glass with your wet 
finger till the glass sounds, you will see the 
water tremble ; a proof that the glass vibrates. 
You shall see me do it ; I have a glass here 
ready. Now, do you not see the water trem- 
ble ?» 

" Oh, yes, quite plain." 

" Well, then, you must be satisfied that the 
glass vibrates, though you cannot see it move. 
When a violin-player draws his bow against 
the strings of his violin, the stretched strings 
begin directly to vibrate ; when a flute-player 
blows into his flute, the flute and air vibrate 
immediately; and when your humming-top 
is set spinning, the air comes in contact with 
the hole in the side, and the top and air 
around it vibrate instantly : the vibrating air 
strikes against your ear, and the humming of 
the top is distinctly heard." 

" Then it is the trembling or shaking of the 
top and the air that makes the noise ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 67 

* Exactly so ; or, as perhaps Mr. White 
would say, it is this that produces the sensa- 
tion of sound. And now comes the last thing 
that I have to explain ; and that is, Why does 
a kite fly in the air 1" 

" Ay ! Now for the kite !" 

" The reason why a kite flies in the air, is, 
because being made of light materials, and 
always kept with its face, or broad surface, to 
the wind, the wind is powerful enough to bear 
it up. If it were turned sideways, the wind 
would not have surface enough to press 
against it ; if it had no tail, it would be un- 
steady, and turn round and round ; and if the 
string were cut, the kite, not having its face 
kept to the wind, must come down. The long 
string on the one side, and the tail on the 
other, balance, and hold the kite steady be- 
tween them/' 

" But why will not my battledoor fly ?" 

" Simply because it is too heavy according 
to its surface. A penny piece will not fly in 
the air, though not a tenth part so heavy as 
a large kite; because it can only present 
about a square inch of surface to the wind : 
whereas paper of the same weight as a penny 
piece, would present a surface to the wind of 
five hundred square inches.' 7 

" I see it very clearly ; and now I am a 



68 LEARNING TO THINK. 

great deal wiser than when I came. You 
may expect me in good time again to-morrow 
night ; for I like learning to think better than 
ever." 

" You will find me ready for you, I dare 
say. Farewell !" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 69 




CHAPTER XL 




i AM in good time again, Henry ; 
for the clock has not yet struck. 
Do you know that George Tan- 
ner wants to learn to think, as 
much as I do. When I told him 
about the hoop, the peg-top, the ball, the 
humming-top, and the kite, he was quite 
pleased." 

" Well, Charles, when you have learned to 
think yourself, you can then teach him ; and 
that will make you more perfect. The reason 
why I wished to he jp you in learning to think 
was, that you had no parents, and appeared 
to be not very happy when you first came 



70 LEARNING TO THINK. 

into the neighbourhood. Mr. White says, 
c Befriend the friendless' is an excellent motto. 
You seem much happier than when you first 
came. One great advantage of learning to 
think is, that it produces a love of thinking. 
When, by reflection, you have found out one 
thing, you feel a desire to find out another. 
You told me very correctly what was neces- 
sary to be done in thinking of a thing ; first, 
to call to mind its qualities, then its uses, 
and afterwards its associations ; but you can- 
not always find out the qualities of things by 
your five senses." 

" I can tell if a thing is hard or soft, heavy 
or light, directly." 

u Yes, you may ; but you cannot tell so 
easily, if it be natural or artificial ; native or 
foreign; animal, vegetable, or mineral. It 
often puzzles wiser heads than ours to find 
out these things; but reading, observing, 
thinking, and conversation, render hard things 
easy. In teaching you to think, I do not un- 
dertake to make you wise, but only to put 
you in a way of making yourself wise. Mr. 
White says, when a boy has once obtained 
the habit of thinking, he is as sure to increase 
in knowledge, as a grain of wheat set in the 
ground is sure to produce an ear of corn." 

" And he is right, depend upon it. As I 



LEARNING TO THINK. 71 

came here, running as fast as I could, the 
wind was against me, and I could not get on 
so fast as I wished. This put me in mind of 
what you said of my hoop, that it often had 
to force its way against the wind. I do not 
wonder now that the hoop should not run 
very far without stopping." 

" There is a way that Mr. White takes with 
me to make me think, whether I will or not ; 
and that is, by asking me questions to which 
I cannot well reply without thinking." 
" What kind of questions are they ?" 
" I will ask you some of them. I remem- 
ber once hearing a capital plan of a trades- 
man, to prevent his errand-boy from making 
mistakes, through thoughtlessness : just be- 
fore the boy set off on his errands, his mas- 
ter always asked him these two questions: 
6 Where are you going?' and 'What are 
you going for?' If the boy was told to take 
a parcel to the shop at the corner, there 
might be a shop at more corners than one. 
If he was told to take it to Mr. Jones, there 
might be half a dozen Mr. Joneses in the 
neighbourhood, and great mistakes might 
take place ; but when he was asked where he 
was going, and what he was going for, his 
master knew at once, by his reply, whether 
he understood his message properly." 



72 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" A very good plan, indeed ; but now please 
to ask me some of the questions you spoke 
of." 

"Well, then, now answer this question. 
Which is the heaviest — a pound of lead or a 
pound of feathers ? Now, think !" 

" Think ! I need not think a moment about 
that ; for every body knows that lead is ten 
times as heavy as feathers ; ay ! twenty 
times." 

" But I do not ask you which is the hea- 
viest — feathers or lead ; I ask you which is 
heaviest, a pound of lead or a pound of fea- 
thers ?» 

" Oh ! I see now : a pound of one must 
be just as heavy as a pound of the other. I 
must think a little more before I answer your 
questions." 

" That is the very thing that I am teaching 
you to do. There is hardly one in ten, among 
us boys, who takes the trouble to think be- 
fore he replies. Can you tell me what o'clock 
it is ? Now, think before you answer." 

" It is half-past six." 

§i There is a want of thought again ! I did 
not ask you what o'clock it was ; I asked 
you, if you could tell me what o'clock it was 
which is a very different thing." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 73 

ft So it is. I will try to be more careful in 
my next answer." 

rt If I give you six young rabbits in a bas- 
ket, and when you open the basket, three of 
them are dead, how many rabbits shall you 
have ?" 

" Why, I shall have » 

" Now, pause a little, and think before you 
speak." 

" Why — I shall have — six. Three alive, 
and three dead." 

" Very good ; and, now, if one man can see 
twenty miles, how far can two men see ?" 

" Just as far again." 

" Are you sure ? Pause a little, and think 
the matter over." 

" Oh, no ! Two men cannot see further 
than one can; what was I thinking of?" 

" Whatever you were thinking of, you were 
not thinking properly of the question. If a 
man can eat a pound of beefsteaks in a quar- 
ter of an hour, how many pounds can he eat 
in half-an-hour?" 

" Oh ! two pounds to be sure." 

" There you are wrong. Very few men 
can eat more than a pound of meat at one 
time 5 and, if they could, they would be much 
longer about the last pound than the first. 

"You must learn to pause before you 
7 



74 LEARNING TO THINK. 

speak, or you will not learn to think before 
you speak. Now, be sure you wait a little. 
As I went to Farmer Paton's, I met two 
horses, two cows, two sheep, and two pigs ; 
pigs, sheep, cows, and horses, how many 
were going to Farmer Paton's ?" 

" Oh ! let me see ! two horses, and two 
cows, four — two sheep, six — and two pigs, 
eight. There were eight going, beside your- 
self." 

" Altogether wrong, Charles ! I said as I 
went to Farmer Paton's, I met these animals : 
now, if I met them, they must have been 
coming from Farmer Paton's, and not going 
to Farmer Paton's." 

" Well, I am very stupid ; but I began to 
count too soon." 

" Yes, you did. Had you paused a little, 
and then thought a little, perhaps you would 
not have made such a mistake. Mr. White 
says, that boys learning arithmetic are too 
apt, when they have a sum to do, to begin 
figuring away before they understand the 
question ; whereas every boy ought to do the 
sum, as it were, in his own mind, before he 
puts down a single figure. The questions 
that I have put to you to-night, are likely 
enough to sharpen your wits, as well as to 



} L ^yt^fLaafiNGr Td THINK. 75 

teach you to think ; but our time is quite gone, 
and I must hastily say, good bye." 

" Good bye, Henry, and thank you for be- 
ing so patient with me ; but I should like to 
ask you just one question before I go." 

" Now for it, then." 

" A cart, with a heavy load in it, stood at 
the bottom of Painter's Hill as I came by : 
the horse pulled at it, but could not get on at 
all, till the carter put a boy on the horse's 
back, and then he went up the hill with the 
cart directly. What made the horse pull bet- 
ter with the boy on his back than he did be- 
fore ?" 

" Perhaps the boy kicked him with his heels 
to force him forward ?" 

" No, indeed he did not ; for he sat quite 
quiet." 

" Well, then, you have puzzled me, for I 
do not know. I must think of it, or, perhaps, 
ask Mr. White, and then I will tell you. 
Farewell !" 







76 



LEARNING TO THINK, 




CHAPTER X. 




HE clock is striking, and here you 
are, Charles. There is a pleas- 
ure in teaching you all I can, 
for you seem so anxious to 
learn. " 

" And so I ought to be anxious, Henry, 
when you are so kind and forbearing with 
me ; but have you found out what made the 
horse go up the hill with the loaded cart ?" 

" No, I could not make it out at all, and 
so I asked Mr. White, when he explained the 
thing to me at once." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 77 

" Did he ! That is right, for I want to 
know sadly. How was it?" 

" Mr. White said, that he once wanted to 
drag a piece of timber up a steep bank on 
the edge of a coppice, but he could not do 
so until he laid hold of the roots and twigs 
which grew out of the ground above him, 
but then he pulled up the log of wood very 
easily." 

" Yes ! so he would ; but the horse had no 
roots and twigs to lay hold of, and if he had, 
they could have been of no use for he had 
no hands." 

" Very true ; but the weight of the boy 
pressing on his back, kept his feet firmer to 
the ground, giving him a better foot-hold, 
and that was much the same as if he had 
laid hold of something." 

" I understand now. I should never have 
found it out." 

" Now, then, to business : let me see how 
far we have proceeded. You know now that 
the way to think on any thing, is to call to 
mind its qualities, its uses, and its associa- 
tions ; and you have been told, that this me- 
thod will become more easy and more useful 
as your general knowledge increases. You 
have also had proofs that knowledge greatly 

adds to our pleasure, in the explanation given 

7 * 



78 LEARNING TO THINK. 

you about the hoop, peg-top, humming-top, 
and kite ; and the last time we met, you had 
questions put to you of a kind likely to quick- 
en your wits, and to give you a habit of pau- 
sing before you speak. It will be well now, 
perhaps, to give you a few instances of the 
sad effects of thoughtlessness, and the great 
advantages of thoughtful habits, in the com- 
mon affairs of life. Mr. White took this 
course with me, and I cannot take a better 
one with you." 

" I will be bound for it, that Mr. White's 
plan is a good one." 

" The mischief that is done by thoughtless- 
ness would hardly be believed by one who 
had never learned to think. A boy that I 
know, left his canary bird out of the cage 
when the cat was in the room : he was only 
away ten minutes, but when he returned, no- 
thing was left of his poor bird but a few fea- 
thers." 

"He was a thoughtless fellow for his 
pains." 

" A young man, in an adjoining street, took 
up a gun, thinking that it was not loaded ; he 
thoughtlessly pointed it at his sister, saying, 
with a laugh, that he would shoot her. No 
sooner did he pull the trigger than his sister 
fell to the ground to rise no more." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 79 

" How shocking !" 

" A little girl being left alone in the house, 
thoughtlessly went to take some water from 
the boiler, when the fire below caught her 
clothes, and she was burned to death. I my- 
self heard her screams, and I saw her when 
she was dead." 

" These accounts are terrible!" 

" A mother thoughtlessly gave her child 
water to drink from the tea-kettle, putting the 
spout to the child's mouth. Some time after, 
the child, being left alone, went again to the 
kettle to drink ; but the water was then boil- 
ing hot, and the poor child was scalded to 
death." 

" Dreadful ! dreadful ! What would that 
mother think of herself?" 

" Now remember, Charles, that in all these 
cases no evil was intended. These terrible 
accidents were brought about by thoughtless- 
ness alone, and they are not a hundredth part 
of the number that have taken place." 

" Thoughtlesness is a very bad thing, much 
worse than I ever took it to be. Why every 
one in the world ought to learn to think." 

" Let us now look on the other side of the 
question. Let us see some of the advantages 
of thoughtfulness." 

" I shall like to hear them." 



80 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



" I remember, last winter, being in a cot- 
tage on a cold snowy evening, when the cot- 
tager returned home from his work, many- 
miles distant, after trudging through the wet 




sloppy snow. His wife was a thoughtful 
woman, so that, when he came in with his 
wet feet, a bright fire awaited him, and a ba- 
sin of hot tea ; while a pair of dry shoes and 
stockings were placed ready for him to put 
on." 

" That was something like ! This woman 
was a good wife, depend upon it !" 

" We all like to be thought of in such cases, 
and one act of this kind speaks louder than 
many words, in telling us we have not been 



LEARNING TO THINK. SI 

forgotten. My uncle was in a house one 
night when the chimney took fire, and there 
was some fear of the house being burned to 
the ground. One wanted to set the doors 
open, and another to take away the fire in the 
grate ; but my uncle, being of a thoughtful 
turn, was too wise to act so foolishly : he 
knew that the draught of air from the opened 
doors would fan the fire in the chimney, and 
that taking away the burning coals would not 
put out the burning soot : so, keeping the 
doors closed, he took a blanket, and after dip- 
ping it in a pail of water, he hung it up all 
across the fire-place, when the steam arising 
from it mounting upwards soon put out the 
fire in the chimney." 

" Capital ! That was well done, howev- 
er !" 

u He was present on one occasion when a 
child was dreadfully burned. The mother 
began to scrape some potatoes to put on the 
burn : but my uncle, instead of the scraped 
potatoes, applied spirits of turpentine ; and 
the doctor said afterwards, that by so doing 
he had, most likely, saved the child." 

" It is a good thing to know what to do in 
such a case." 

" Thinking people strive to remember what 
they hear of a useful kind, and are, on that 



82 LEARNING TO THINK. 

account, able to do good, when the thought- 
less would do nothing but mischief. A poor 
man by accident cut his foot deeply near the 
ancle, with a bill-hook, and would have bled 
to death, no doctor being near ; but a think- 
ing fellow-labourer, taking his handkerchief 
from his neck, doubled it up, and pressed it 
hard against the wound, tying it over ivith 
his garter. A doctor was then sent for, and 
the man's life was saved." 

" Poor fellow ! he had reason to be thank- 
ful." 

" A fire broke out in the cow-house of a 
farm-yard, where a wooden shed joined the 
cow-house to the barn, stabling, and farm- 
house. Half a dozen thoughtless people 
wasted their strength in vain, in trying to put 
out the flames; but a servant man, more 
thoughtful than the rest, set about pulling 
down the wooden shed, thereby confining the 
fire to the cow-house, and saving the barn, 
stables, and farm-house from being burned to 
the ground." 

" That man deserved to be rewarded." 

" Many of the greatest discoveries in the 
world have been brought about by accident, 
thinking people having turned these accidents 
to advantage. Glass is made of sand or flint, 
mixed with a substance called an alkali. 



LEARNING TO THINK. S3 

Some merchants, driven ashore in Syria by a 
storm, made a fire on the sands, with a vege- 
table called kali, which grew there. The 
sand, melted by the heat, mixed with the 
ashes of the kali, and became glass. This 
gave the merchants, who were thinking men, 
the hint how to make glass, and thus all our 
window panes and drinking glasses have 
been produced." 

" Well done, merchants ! They were cle- 
ver, as well as thinking people," 

" It is said that a silk trader, who had met 
with many disappointments in his business, 
stood a long while thinking in his mind what 
he should do. All this time he kept chewing 
a bit of raw silk in his mouth, but when he 
spat it out, he observed that it had a fine 
glossy colour. This accident, improved by a 
thinking mind, brought about the beautiful 
coloured floss silk, now so much in use." 

u What curious things you do think of ! 
The silk trader was glad enough at his dis- 
covery." 

" Gunpowder was discovered by accident, 
as well as the power of steam, to which the 
world is now so much indebted ; and it was 
by the accidental falling of an apple, that the 
thinking mind of Sir Isaac Newton was led 
to form his beautiful system of the heaven, y 



84 LEARNING TO THINK. 

bodies : but I must now break off my re- 
marks." 

" Farewell, Henry ! I want to learn to 
think now more than ever !" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 85' 




CHAPTER XL 

|0W I am here again, I want to 
ask you something, Henry." 

" Let me hear your question 

then, Charles; you shall have 

the best answer I can give you." 

"Why is it that the clouds above our 

heads look so high, while those at a distance 

seem to touch the very ground ?" 

"Why is it? Oh, because — no, that can- 
not be the reason neither — I really do not 
know the reason ; I must ask Mr. White 
about it." 

* Well, then, if you cannot tell me that, 
please to tell me what subject is the fullest to 
think upon ; for I sadly want to know ?" 

"There are many subjects, which Mr. 
White tells me are inexhaustible, and indeed 
never to be understood. When we think of 
God, or of eternity, we soon get beyond our 
depth : we should always think of such sub- 
jects with deep reverence and humility." 
8 



86 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Yes ; but I do not mean such subjects as 
these, but something which we can under- 
stand." 

" Well, then, the subject of books is, per- 
haps, as full and extensive as any ; because 
books have been written on almost every- 
thing in the world. If you examine this 
book, you will see that it has a great many 
parts to occupy your attention. The outside, 
the inside, the binding, the back, the corners, 
the edges, the sides, the top, the bottom, the 
beginning, the ending, the middle, the paper, 
the ink, the leaves, the letters, the numbers, 
the words, the stops, the syllables, the sen- 
tences, the title-page, the preface, the con- 
tents, the margin, the lines, the stitching, the 
lettering, the ornamenting, the gilding, the 
pictures, and the fly leaves." 

" Why, here is enough to think of for a 
day, without going further." 

" Books are almost endless in their uses. 
If good, they entertain, instruct, reprove, and 
encourage us. They fit us to be Useful while 
we are here, and they help us to prepare for 
a hereafter. Whether we are young or old, 
rich or poor, wise or foolish, in sickness or in 
health, living or dying, a good book may be 
made of ^reat use to us." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 87 

" And now, when you come to your asso- 
ciations, you will have plenty to say." 

" Mr. White was speaking to me of books 
this very day, so that I may perhaps remem- 
ber some of his observations. The less we 
have to do with bad books the better, there- 
fore we will say nothing about them ; but of 
good books we might talk by the hour. 
Think of the books that first taught us our 
letters, and all the entertaining and useful 
school books that we have seen and read." 

a Ay, we should have been but sadly off 
without them." 

"Think of the knowledge that has been 
gained from books of arithmetic, grammar, 
geography, history, natural history, astro- 
nomy, and philosophy, with the arts and 
sciences $ to say nothing of all the delightful 
adventures of travellers by sea and land that 
we have pored over with pleasure." 

" I can fancy that I have Robinson Crusoe 
before me now." 

" Yes, and Pilgrim's Progress, and twenty 
other works that have delighted us. Had it 
not been for books, what should I have 
known of the lives of those good men, Leigh- 
ton, Baxter, Bishop Hall, Doddridge, Bunyan, 
Flavel, Matthew Henry, Howard, Scott, 



88 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



Swartz, Newton, Wesley, Whitefield, Watts, 
and Romaine ?" 

" What a memory you have !" 

a Think of the flood of knowledge that has 
been poured out in the shape of books, by 
the Bible Society and the Religious Tract 
Society. The one has sent forth fifteen mil- 
lions of Bibles: and the other, about four 




hundred millions of useful and pious publi- 
cations." 

" What a number !" 

" Fancy to yourself the half-frozen Esqui- 
maux amid ice and snow ; the olive-coloured 
Hindoo, the sooty negro, the savage New 
Zealander, the wild Caffre, and the ignorant 



LEARNING TO THINK. 89 

Hottentot — some of these have obtained the 
best of knowledge from books. I can see 
them now : here are some in their under- 
ground houses; and there is a group of 
Hindoos sitting in a verandah, near the river 
Ganges ; there is a family in their wigwam 5 
a fourth in the desert ; a fifth in their canoe ; 
and a sixth in the bush country, all putting 
away from them the idols they have wor- 
shipped, and reading in books, printed in 
their own language, the way of salvation 
through the Saviour of sinners." 

" I see now that books take in all the na- 
tions of the world." 

" If people had not learned to think, we 
should never have had a printed book to read. 
They were thinking people that invented and 
brought to perfection the printing press, mi- 
croscope, telescope, safety lamp, fire escape, 
mariner's compass, life boat, and ship build- 
ing." 

" It is very odd that I should never have 
thought any thing about thinking till lately • 
however, I must try to make up for this neg- 
lect in future." 

" To one who has learned to think, as I 

said before, the world is a different place to 

what it once appeared. He will not only learn 

to look at things singly, but at the world at 

8 * 



90 LEARNING TO THINK. 

large. He will reflect on its continents and 
islands ; its mountains and valleys ; its rivers, 
lakes, and oceans ; its trees and flowers ; re- 
garding it as the dwelling place of man, fitted 
out for him by his Almighty Maker. He will 
turn to the animated creation, and gaze with 
wonder on the different natures of insects, 
reptiles, birds, fishes, and beasts. After this, 
man will become more the subject of his 
thoughts ; and then, perhaps, he will be led 
to reflect on his Almighty Maker, the Creator 
and Preserver of all things." 

" You have summed up every thing now." 

" No, not every thing ; for Mr. White says, 
that many reflect wisely on creation, and think 
reverently of their Creator, -who are altogether 
in ignorance of the Redeemer. Now, if we 
know about all things on the earth, and do 
not know our way to heaven, of what use to 
us will be all our knowledge ?" 

" Very true. You have mentioned so many 
things to-night, that I shall have plenty to 
think of till I come again." 

" Mr. White pointed out to me the amazing 
power that man has over all living things, 
when he uses the faculties of his mind ; that 
is, when he becomes a thinker. The crocodile 
and the boa constrictor are, perhaps, the 
most formidable creatures among reptiles; 



LEARNING TO THINK. 91 

but thinking man easily puts a hook into the 
jaws of the one, and with weapons destroys 
the other. The eagle, the king of birds, is 
swift in the air; but thinking man is still 
swifter, for he overtakes him with a shaft 
from a bow, or a bullet from his gun, and 
brings him to the ground. 

" The lion and the elephant are the strong- 
est among beasts ; yet thinking man easily 
takes them both in his snares, and keeps 
them as his captives or his slaves ; and the 
mighty whale, the greatest and the strongest 
among the inhabitants of the sea, contends 
in vain with thinking man, who strikes him 
with harpoons till he turns on his back and 
dies." 

" Why, it seems to me that a thinking man 
can do almost any thing." 

"But now comes the strongest proof of 
all, of the power of thought. Men who have 
learned to think, easily overcome all other 
men in the world. Ten civilized men are 
more than a match for a hundred savages ; 
for, instead of grappling with their foes, hand 
to hand, they make themselves fire-arms, and 
destroy them at a distance." 

" I see clearly that an ignorant man has no 
chance with one who has learned to think." 

" Thought gives knowledge, and knowledge 



92 LEARNING TO THINK. 

gives power ; but good men will not use, or 
rather misuse, their power, as bad men do. 
Bad men will go among savages to wrong 
them, and to shed their blood ; but good men 
mingle with them to do them good, to take 
them seeds and implements of husbandry, to 
trade with them, to instruct them in useful 
arts, to spread among them the gospel of 
peace, and to direct them in the way to 
heaven." 

" Well ! if I remember one half of what you 
have said to night, I shall be a great deal 
wiser than I was before. I would not give 
up learning to think on any account whatever. 
Farewell ! and thank you." 

* On Monday come again. Good bye." 



g 






LEARNING TO THINK. 



93 




CHAPTER XII. 




AM glad you are here early to- 
night, Charles, because I am in a 
hurry, and cannot stop long." 

" I am sorry for that, Henry ; 
but we must lose no time, then. 
Did you ask Mr. White about the clouds i" 

"Yes, I did; and he says the reason why 
the clouds at a distance seem to touch the 
ground is this : The world being of the shape 
of a ball, the clouds are spread around it in 
every direction at about an equal distance, 
like a huge umbrella over our heads. Now, 
though we can see the distance between us 
and the farthest discernible object on the 



94 LEARNING TO THINK. 

earth, we cannot see the distance between that 
object and the sky : for this reason it is, then, 
that distant objects appear to touch the sky, 
simply because we cannot see the distance 
between them." 

" I see now very well ; but I shall never be 
able to learn to think so well as I want to 
think, that is certain." 

" Oh, never fear ! I have awakened within 
you a desire to learn to think, and doing that 
is a little like setting a stone to roll down 
hill \ when once set off, it will continue its 
course of itself. Having set you off thinking, 
I am not at all fearful of your stopping in 
your course ! Every one is at fault some- 
times, and, therefore, you must not be out of 
h,eart when you find yourself at a loss. Re- 
member how you puzzled me about the horse 
pulling the cart up the hill, and about the 
clouds." 

" There are half-a-dozen, or a dozen other 
things that I want to know. Ever since 
you told me about the hoop, the peg-top, 
the ball, the humming-top, and the kite, I 
have intended to ask you. In the first place, 
do you know why my squirt draws up the 
water ? I cannot make it out." 

" Mr. White has explained fifty things of 
this kind to me ; and I will try, as well as I 



LEARNING TO THINK. 95 

can, to make you understand what you want 
to know. I must begin by saying, that the 
air, which is all around us, presses against 
every thing ; and the only reason why we do 
not feel it, is because it presses equally on all 
sides at the same time. A balloon, that 
bulges out so much, would, if the inside air 
were all taken out of it, be pressed together 
by the outside air, as flat as a pancake." 
" Would it really ?" 

" Yes ; but I will now speak of the squirt. 
The handle has something wrapped round it 
on the inside, which makes it air-tight. When 
you put the point in the water, and pull up 
the handle, it leaves what is called a vacuum, 
that is, a space with no air in it, inside the 
squirt ; into this space the water is forced up 
by the outward air,which presses upon it." 
" I can hardly understand that." 
a Well, then, I will try to make it plainer. 
If you put a wheaten straw into a pail of 
milk, and suck up at the other end of it, you 
draw away the air out of the straw, and the 
outward air, pressing on the milk in the pail, 
forces it up the straw." 

" It is much plainer to me now." 
Ci When a man smokes a pipe, it is on the 
same principle. So long as he lets the pipe 
alone, the smoke of the tobacco comes out at 



96 LEARNING TO THINK. 

the bowl end; but directly the man draws 
the air out of the tube of the pipe with his 
mouth, and makes a vacuum there, the out- 
ward air forces the smoke up the tube into 
the smoker's mouth." 

" Now I understand you very well. Tell 
me next, if you please, why my leathern sucker 
sticks so fast to the stone on which I put it. 
I can hardly pull it away." 

" I dare say not. After you have pushed 
the wet leather close down to the stone, you 
make a vacuum, when you pull the string, 
between the middle of the leather, which you 
pull up, and the stone, and then the pressure 
of the outward air on the leather keeps it fast 
to the stone. Mr. White took away the air 
from under my hand with an air-pump, and 
I felt directly such a weight on my hand that 
I could hardly stir it at all : the weight was 
the outward air, which pushed my hand to- 
wards the vacuum." 

" This is very wonderful." 

" We are in a world of wonders ; but have 
you any other question to ask me ?" 

" Yes ! two or three more. I was in old. 
nurse's cottage to-day, and because the fire 
was almost out, she put the poker across it, 
to make it burn. How can laying a poker 
across make the fire burn ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 97 

" Mr. White says the reason may be this. 
Iron is a good conductor of heat; that is, it soon 
gets hot. As it draws a good deal of heat to 
one point, it makes the air round it lighter, 
so that it ascends quicker, and this occasions 
a draught through the fire." 

" You seem to understand every tiling." 

" Oh, no ! but you happen to ask me ques- 
tions about which I have been curious my- 
self, and I have asked about them." 

" I have seen a stick put across to draw up 
the fire : will a stick do as well as a poker ?" 

"That I really cannot tell, never having 
asked Mr. White ; but if his explanation of 
the poker be correct, I should think it would 
not." 

u Old nurse has got a weather-house, and 
a man comes out of it in wet weather ; but in 
dry weather he goes in again, and a woman 
comes out. Can you account for it ?" 

" Very easily. The man and the woman 
are made to move by a piece of catgut inside. 
When the air is moist, the catgut stretches, 
and out comes the man ; but when the air is 
dry, the catgut shrinks up, and by drawing in 
the man at one end of a stick, pushes out the 
woman at the other." 

" Well how curious ! It is a silly thing 
not to learn to think. Do you know why the 
9 



98 LEARNING TO THINK. 

sun puts the fire out ; for old nurse says it 
does?" 

" Ay ! Mr. White says so too, and for this 
reason, that the purest part of the air, called 
oxygen, which principally supports the fire, is 
drawn away by the sunbeams. But have 
you asked me all your questions now, for I 
have no more time to spare ?" 

" I will only ask one question more, and 
that is, How can we tell that the world is 
round, and not flat ?" 

" That used to puzzle me, till it was ex- 
plained to me, but I can now give you sev- 
eral reasons $ one, perhaps, will be sufficient. 
If a fly was to crawl along the flat table, in a 
straight line, he would never come to the spot 
where he started from ; would he ?" 

" No, never ! he would get further from it 
every step he took." 

" But if a fly was to crawl round an apple, 
in a straight line, he would come to the same 
place from which he started, without turning 
back again." 

" Yes, he would ; that is certain." 

" Well, then, a ship does the same thing , 
for it sails straight on round the world with- 
out turning back again, till it comes to the 
same place where it set sail from." 

" Then the world must be round, though 



LEARNING TO THINK. 99 

old nurse will not believe it ; but I shall know 
now how to teach her. Learning to think is 
a most capital thing !" 

" And, as you think so, I trust you will go 
on to learn ; not forgetting, when you think 
of any thing, its qualities, its uses, and its 
associations. Suppose I sum up together 
some of the advantages of thoughtfulness." 

" Ay, do ; and then I shall, perhaps, re- 
member them better. " 

"Thinking adds to our pleasure, making 
every thing around us interesting. It pro- 
duces a love of thought, and a habit of paus- 
ing and considering before replying to a ques- 
tion. It extends our knowledge and power, 
quickens our faculties, corrects our judgment, 
enlarges our minds, and explains many things 
around us, which we do not understand. It 
lessens labour, makes hard things easy, pro- 
tects us from evils which thoughtlessness 
brings upon us, gives us power over all living 
things and unthinking people, and renders us 
more useful and more happy. In a word, if 
we learn to think, and put our thoughts to 
a good use, we shall not fail to fear and obey 
God, and to love and serve mankind." 

" Come, you have summed up every thing 
famously ; and I am glad that I know now, 
why my squirt dr^ws up the water, and my 



100 LEARNING TO THINK. 

sucker sticks to the stone ; why the poker laid 
across makes the fire burn; why the man 
comes out of the weather-house when it is 
wet ; why the sun puts out the fire ; and how 
to prove to old nurse that the world is as 
round as a ball." 

" If you like, you may come a little earlier 
to-morrow night. Farewell !" 

" Then I will. Farewell; and thank you." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



101 



CHAPTER XIII. 




WANT to know a great many 
things, Henry ; but first, can you 
tell me how to talk ? I am in 
pretty good time to-night, so 
please to tell me the way to learn 
to talk." 

" The way to learn to talk, Charles, that is 
if you wish to talk to any good purpose, is 
to learn to think, so that you are in the high 
road of learning to talk. Mr. White says, that 
to talk well, wisely, and humbly, is a great 
attainment ; but why do you wish to learn ?" 
"I will tell you. This morning a lady 
called at our house with two little boys, 
younger than I am, and we took a walk to- 
gether round the garden. One of them spoke 
very prettily about the flowers, and I felt 
ashamed that he should be able to talk about 
them better than I could do." 

" Depend upon it, Charles, that little boy 
was a thinker. Get on in your thinking, and 
9* 



102 LEARNING TO THINK. 

then you will find but little difficulty in talk- 
ing." 

" You can talk of every thing, and I can 
talk of nothing." 

" No, no, Charles ! you are mistaken ; you 
think me wiser than I am, because I tell you 
so much of what Mr. White has told me. He 
says, that thoughts grow very fast, and that 
the more we think, the more we shall find to 
think about." 

" That seems very strange, but tell me how 
a thought grows." 

"You shall see. Suppose you were to 
speak of field flowers, a little thought would 
bring to your mind the heath-flower and daisy, 
the primrose, cowslip, and daffodil, the brier- 
rose, the violet, and convolvulus." 

" Yes, I should think of them so far as to 
mention their names, and then I should come 
to a stand still ; but how should I be able to 
make my thoughts grow ?" 

" By thinking of the field flowers a little 
more, for then you might be reminded of the 
situations in which they grow. The heath- 
flower abounds on the mountain and the moor ; 
the daisy adorns the mead ; the primrose, and 
cowslip, and daffodil are found in the dell, the 
coppice, the dingle, and the knolly-field ; the 
brier-rose beautifies the hedges 5 the shady 



LEARNING TO THINK. 103 

bank is made fragrant by the violet ; and the 
brink of the watery ditch is garlanded with 
the wild convolvulus. n 

" Well, that is good ! Thoughts do grow 
very fast, and if you went on thinking still 
more of field flowers, would your thoughts 
keep on growing ?" 

" To be sure they would, but you shall 
judge for yourself. Have you forgotten what 
I told you about associations ?" 

" No ; but it was in learning to think that 
I was to remember associations ?" 

" Very true ; but as you cannot learn to 
talk wisely, without learning to think wisely, 
60 in talking as well as in thinking, you must 
make the best of your associations." 

"And how will your associations make 
your thoughts about the flowers grow ?" 

" In this way. The moor and the moun- 
tain, remind me of a story I once heard of a 
hermit, who lived on the side of a mountain, 
that rose up from an extended moor. For 
three years he dwelt in a cleft of the moun- 
tain, eating of the roots and rude berries, 
which were found at its base, and drinking 
of a fountain that issued from a rock. For 
three years he inhabited this inhospitable 
place, doing no good to human kind. It hap- 
pened, that one day on visiting a village, not 



104 LEARNING TO THINK. 

very remote from the place, in a time of sick- 
ness, he was able, by his knowledge of herbs, 
greatly to relieve three villagers of their 
malady, on which occasion he thus spoke 
to himself. 

* 6 In the last three hours I have done more 
service than in the three preceding years : I 
now see that it is not by shunning society, 
but by dwelling among men, that we can 
most glorify God and benefit human kind/ " 

" Well, that is a capital story." 

" The daisy brings to my mind the little 
flower, or sprig of moss, I forget which, that 
gave comfort to Mungo Park, when in a fit 
of despondency he flung himself on the ground 
in a desert place. If, thought he, God takes 
such care of the herb of the field, why should 
I doubt his goodness to me ?" 

" Well said, Mungo Park." 

" I have now before my fancy a high bank, 
near the brink of a river. I saw it when it 
was c6vered with primroses of different 
colours, for which it was so famous, that it 
went by the name of the Beautiful Bank. 
Many times have I thanked God for the sight 
of those lovely primroses." 

" Your thoughts do grow most famously." 

" I must pass over some of the flowers, and 
come to the convolvulus which garlanded 



LEARNING TO THINK. 105 

the ditch ; and if it brings nothing else to my 
remembrance, it reminds me of that text of 
Scripture ' If the blind lead the blind, both 
shall fall into the ditch/ The ignorant may- 
be said to be blind ; learn then to think, and 
grow wise, and you will neither yourself fall 
into the ditch, nor lead another there." 

" It is as plain as that two and two make 
four, that thoughts do grow, and very fast 
too." 

" Let me now see if you have been think- 
ing of what I have said, and if a thought will 
not grow in your head, as well as in mine ? 
Instead of field flowers let us speak of birds : 
what birds can you think of?" 

" I can think of plenty of birds. There are 
the robin and the wren, the martin and the 
swallow, the magpie and the crow, and the 
hawk and the eagle." 

" Very good ! You have called to mind 
these with very little thought, and now let us 
see if your thoughts will not grow. I told 
you where the field flowers were to be found; 
tell me then where these birds build their 
nests." 

" The robin and the wren build their nests 
in the bank. You can hardly put your 
finger in the hole of a wren's nest, it is so 
very small The martin and the swallow 



106 LEARNING TO THINK. 

build under the eaves of houses, or other 
buildings ; the martin's nest is made of mud. 
The magpie and the crow build in tall trees ; 
and the magpie has a covering of little sticks 
over his nest. I never saw a hawk's nest, or 
an eagle's ; but I have heard that the eagle 
builds on the side of a high rock." 

" Do you not see how your .thoughts have 
grown already ? Why they take up twice the 
room they did before ! But now try to think 
still more of these birds. What did you 
ever see or hear of the robin and the wren ?" 

" A Robin used to hop in sharp weather on 
my father's knee, as he sat in the summer 
arbour, with a plate of crumbs on his lap ; 
but when the warm summer came, he was 
off to the fields, and no more came to the 
arbour." 

" Ay, there are many such friends in the 
world as that robin ; but do you remember 
any thing of the rest of the birds ?" 

" I remember asking my uncle, why the 
martins and swallows flew about so swiftly, 
skimming along almost close to the water on 
the pond ; indeed, sometimes they dipped in- 
to the water ; and he told me it was to catch 
the flies. I never knew before what the rea- 
son was." 

" Now for the other birds." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 107 

" There was a crow and a magpie that 
built their nests on the two elms at the back 
of our garden. The crow did no mischief 
that I know of, but the magpie flew off at 
different times with a dolPs frock, a glove be- 
longing to my sister, and one of my old 
buckle garters." 

" We must not be too hard on the poor 
bird, Charles ; for boys are sometimes as mis- 
chievous as magpies." 

" You do not mean me, do you ?" 

u Whoever I meant, I did not say that I 
meant you ; but if you think that you are 
mischievous as a magpie, I cannot help it. 
Do you know any thing about a hawk or an 
eagle ?" 

" Nothing about an eagle ; but once when 
I was at my uncle's farm, a hawk pounced 
down upon one of the pigeons as he stood by 
the side of the pond, a little way in the 
water. Away flew the hawk, with the pigeon 
dangling from his claws. While I was look- 
ing at him, a gun went off, the pigeon flew 
away, and down tumbled the hawk into the 
fold-yard. It was my uncle who shot the 
hawk from behind the pigeon-house." 

"Do' you now see how your thoughts 
have grown ? I question if your account of 



108 LEARNING TO THINE. 

the birds is not better than mine 'of the 
flowers." 

" I hardly thought of getting on so well, 
but if you had not put me in the right way, 
and asked me the proper questions, how 
would it have been then ?" 

" Perhaps I may have helped you a little ; 
but by thinking on what we have both said, 
and adopting the same plan, you may be able 
to talk quite as easily about the beasts of the 
field, the fishes of the sea, and many other 
parts of God's creation as of flowers and 
birds. If Mr. White were here I know what 
he would say." 

" What would he say ? How can you 
tell?" 

"I do not mean, that I know the very 
words he would speak, but very near the 
meaning of them. He would say that whe- 
ther we talked of one part of the creation or 
of another, we should try to turn our conver- 
sation to profit. The same Almighty hand 
that made an ant, formed an elephant ; the 
same Almighty power that spangled the grass 
with dew, and scattered dust on the ground, 
spread abroad the wide ocean, and piled up 
the mountains one above another, for i the 
sea is his, and he made it, and his hands 
formed the dry land/ Mr. White would 



LEARNING TO THINK. 109 

say, that we should never think of God's 
works without desiring to promote God's 
glory." 

" And it would be right, too, every word 
of it. I feel sure that I could talk better now 
about many things, than I could when I first 
came to you." 

" I am glad to hear you say so, for it shows 
that our time has not been wasted. Fare- 
well !" 



10 



110 LEARNING TO THINK. 




CHAPTER XIV. 

ELL, Charles ! you are here. 
Let me tell you again, that as 
you get more knowledge, you 
must be more than ever on your 
guard against being conceited 
and high-minded ; for this, in a boy, is one 
of the most difficult things to cure." 

" I have not much to be high-minded and 
conceited about, Henry ; for I know very 
little." 

" Those who know but little, are often more 
conceited than those who know a great deal. 
I do not think you are at all conceited now, 
and I hope you never will be. Mr. White 
tells me that he has more hope of a boy of 
moderate talents who is humble and perse- 
vering, than of one who is clever, who thinks 
more highly of himself than he ought to 
think. He says, we ought never to conclude 
that another is more ignorant than ourselves, 
merely because he does not do things in the 



LEARNING TO THINK. Ill 

same way that we do them. There are such 
different ways of doing things, that we ought 
to compare his way with ours, and see which 
is the best before we venture to call his 
knowledge in question." 

* There may be different ways of doing a 
thing, but one way must be better than an- 
other." 

" It may be so in most cases, but not in 
all ; and then our way may not be the best, 
you know. 

"In going a walk yesterday, Mr. White 
threw his cane too far in showing me how 
the Indians threw their lances, and it fell into 
Fowler's large pool ; the question then was 
how to get it out again, for it was nearly a 
dozen yards from the side." 

" I know what I would have done. I would 
have thrown stones just beyond it, and the 
splash of the water would have soon brought 
it to the side." 

" And so I thought, but the wind blew too 
strong for that, and drove the cane back again 
faster than the splashing of the water brought 
it nearer. Mr. White thought a moment, 
and then determined to take off his clothes, 
and swim for it." 

u Well, I suppose that was the very best 
thing that could be done." 



112 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



" He said, ' Now if I had a piece of string 
long enough, by tying a stone or a stick to 
the end of it, and throwing it beyond the 
cane, I could pull it out;' but he had no 
string." 

" Ay, then he was obliged to swim for it 
after all" 

" You are wrong there, for just as he had 




pulled off his coat, Reynolds, the baker, came 
up with his great Newfoundland dog. No 
sooner did Reynolds see what was the matter, 
than he picked up a stone, and cried, * Carlo ! 
Carlo !" He then threw the stone into the 
water just b;y the cane, when in plunged 
Carlo, and in two minutes he came out again 
with the cane in his mouth." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 113 

" Capital ! Well done, baker ! and well 
done Carlo, too ! I dare say that the dog 
thought it was the stick that was thrown into 
the water/' 

" Very likely. I once heard of an Indian 
who was so surprised at the number of peo- 
ple that he saw when he came into civilized 
society, that he began to keep an account of 
them by cutting a notch on a stick for every 
person who passed ; his stick was soon full, 
and finding still more people, he threw it 
away as useless. Those who have thought 
more than the Indian, would have used a 
better method : they would have put down 
the number in figures. You remember that 
in one of our early meetings, I spoke to you 
about anchors." 

" Oh, yes, I remember it very well." 

" And you know that a cable is a long 
thick rope fastened at one end to the anchor, 
and at the other to the ship. Well f in Eu- 
rope, cables are made of hemp ; in Africa, of 
straw, and in Asia, often of long grass : still 
they are all cables, made with the same object, 
and answer the same end, though they are 
made in a different manner." 

" The hemp cable must be the best though, 
and I should think it foolish to make a cable 
of straw or grass." 

10* 



114 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Hemp may be, and no doubt is, the best, 
but the others may be cheaper, or easier 
made, or have some other advantage, so that 
it may be as wise to make a straw cable in 
Africa, and a grass cable in Asia, if they an- 
swer the purpose intended, as to make a 
hemp cable in Europe. Cables now are 
usually made of iron, these being stronger 
than those of hemp. If a mariner wished 
to sail round the world, it would not matter 
whether he sailed to the east or to the west, 
for either would take him round the world if 
he went on, and he would come to the same 
place again, like a fly crawling round an 
apple." 

" I should not have thought of that, and yet 
it must be so. I see clear enough that there 
are different ways of doing the same thing." 

" One man who wishes to measure an ob- 
ject, takes with him a string for that pur- 
pose ; while another puts into his pocket a 
foot rule, or a yard rule, for the same purpose. 
Indeed, there are half a dozen ways of doing 
many things. Suppose half a dozen persons 
want to find the text of Scripture, " A wise 
son maketh a glad father : but a foolish son is 
the heaviness of his mother," Pro v. x. 1. Not 
knowing exactly where to find it, they look 
for it in Cruden's Concordance; but every 



LEARNING TO THINK. 115 

one sets about it in a different way. One 
looks for the word wise, another for the word 
son, a third for maketh, a fourth for glad, a 
fifth for father, and a sixth for foolish; so 
that they all succeed in attaining their object 
in a different course ; and if even two other 
persons wished to find the same text, one 
might find it under the word heaviness, and 
the other under that of mother." 

" Famous ! Why here are eight ways of 
doing the same thing, and every one of them 
as good as the other." 

"I knew two labouring men who were 
neighbours, and each of them had a garden. 
One was always in his garden, in summer, at 
five o'clock, but the other never did any thing 
at his garden, till six or seven o'clock at 
night." 

" He must have been an industrious man 
who began to work so early, but the other 
was a sad idle fellow." 

" Not so, for he was quite as industrious as 
his neighbour." 

" How can that be, when one was up with 
the lark, and the other was never seen with a 
spade in his hand till night ?" 

" I will tell you. They worked at the same 
place, and it was necessary for one to be at 
the factory very early, so that he had no time 



116 LEARNING TO THINK. 

to get into his garden till he came home in 
the evening. The other being required at the 
factory at a different time, did not go there 
early in the morning, so that he was able to 
work in his garden an hour or two before he 
went to his employment. You now see, then, 
that one might be quite as diligent as the 
other." 

" Yes I do, Henry. If I could only think 
as you do, I should not make so many mis- 
takes." 

" Now, let me see if you can think right in 
the following case. John and Thomas were 
two neighbours, who wanted to speak with 
each other when they had an opportunity. 
One day they met in a wide road, but John 
happened to be on one side the road, and 
Thomas on the other. Now, ought Thomas 
to have crossed over to John ? Or should 
John have gone over to Thomas ?" 

" Oh, that could make no difference at all. 
In such a case it would not matter at all 
which crossed over." 

" When you have learned to think, you 
will give me a very different answer." 

" Well, I think you must be wrong there ! 
Why what could it signify to either of them 
in such a little affair as crossing the road?" 

" Very little, certainly, if they were both 



LEARNING TO THINK. 117 

able to cross the road without difficulty, but it 
would signify a great deal, if one of them was 
upright, and the other very lame, or, if one 
had a heavy burden on his back, and the 
other carried no burden at all." 

" You are right, that you are, after all." 

" Learning to think should make us con- 
sider the state of others. We should always 
turn out of the way for one who is heavily 
laden ; we should be ready to run on an er- 
rand for the lame, and to read the Holy Scrip- 
tures to the blind, or to those who cannot read 
themselves. I wish you could hear one half 
of what Mr. White says on the subject of 
consideration." 

" I can think about a knife, a piece of flint, 
a hoop, a peg-top, and things of that sort, 
better than I can about what people ought to 
do and to say." 

"Because the latter requires more judg- 
ment. The great point is to gain the habit 
of thinking, but most of us are apt to speak 
and to act without thinking at all. After a 
while, I have no doubt you will be a thinker." 

"I shall try to remember not hastily to 
blame a boy who does a thing in a different 
way to what I do it." 

"A very good resolution. If two men 
have to go a dozen miles, one, being hearty 



118 LEARNING TO THINK. 

and strong, may prefer to walk, for then his 
journey will cost him little or nothing 5 but 
the other, being weakly, may think it better 
to hire a horse, and ride : for though it may 
cost him more money than walking, it will be 
more convenient to him, and he may gain in 
time what he pays in money." 

" Yes, and save himself a long walk into 
the bargain." 

" One man works with his hands, another 
with his head ; one man works hard and 
spends freely, another does less work, and 
spends less money, so as to be equal with the 
other at the week's end." 

" I should think a long while before these 
things would come into my mind." 

" Well, you have had enough for the pre- 
sent, but I hope you will not forget to keep 
humble; and to be considerate, you must 
also try to remember that there are more 
ways than one of doing the same thing 
Farewell." 

" I hope I shall. Farewell, and thank you 
Henrv." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 119 




CHAPTER XV. 

( OW are you, Charles, after your 
walk ? But I hardly need ask 
you, for the colour in your cheeks 
tells me." 

" Very well, thank you, Hen- 
ry. I have had such a run, for I want to 
know something about building: can you 
tell me about it ?" 

" Not a great deal, but I have heard some- 
thing about most trades, and if your questions 
are not very difficult, perhaps I may be able 
to answer them." 

"This morning I went into the hut that 
stands on the edge of the common, and it 
was full of smoke ; for old Betty was boiling 
her pot, and a shower fell, and the rain came 
through the hole at the top, where the smoke 
ought to have gone. After that, the water 
ran under the old crazy door, and the wind 
blew through the cracks in the wall. If I 
ever build myself a house, I will take pretty 



120 LEARNING TO THINK. 

good care to keep out the rain, and to let out 
the smoke." 

"A great deal of thought is required in 
building a house. How would you set about 
yours?" 

" That I hardly know, but I would have 
a very wide chimney to let out the smoke 
you may depend upon it, and it should run 
straight up very high in the air. My house 
snould be built, too, on a very high hill, and 
then the water would not run in under the 
door." 

" If the chimney were very wide, it would 
be very likely to let in the rain, but not quite 
so likely to let out the smoke. A small 
chimney would have a better draught than a 
very wide one." 

" Would it, indeed ?" 

" Yes, and for this reason — the hotter, or 
the more rarified the air is in the chimney, 
the lighter it is, and the faster it goes up- 
wards. Now, the fire could not rarify the air 
in a very wide chimney, so much as in a nar- 
row one." 

" Oh, then, my chimney shall run up very 
high, but it shall not be very wide." 

" It would be rather dangerous to run it 
up very high, especially as your house is on 
a hill, for it might, in some blustering day or 



LEARNING TO THINK. 121 

night in November, come toppling down 
upon the roof, and, perhaps, upon your 
head." 

" So it might, I never thought of that. I 
will have a low chimney, a high one will 
never do, I see." 

" I can hardly approve of your plan of 
building on the top of a very high hill : for, 
in the first place, you would not be likely to 
obtain a good supply of water in your well, 
unless you sunk it very deep, and that would 
cost a great deal of money, and after all be 
very inconvenient." 

" I see that I am wrong again." 

" Then, though your house might be plea- 
sant in summer, it would be sadly exposed in 
the winter : and, besides, it would be no easy 
matter to have every heavy thing you wanted 
dragged up to the top of a very high hill." 

" I will give it up at once, Henry. No 
houses on high hills for me ; I see they will 
never do at all. But if you had to build a 
house, what would you do ?" 

" No doubt if I were to have a house built 
under my own direction, I should make sad 
mistakes for want of knowledge ; but having 
more thought than you, I might, perhaps, run 
into fewer errors." 

" Just tell me how you would proceed." 
11 



122 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Well, then, I will. Food, clothes, and a 
house to dwell in, are the first three wants 
of man. The savage hunts and fishes for 
food, wears the skins of animals for clothes, 
and lives in a cave, a hut, a tent, or a wig- 
wam ; but civilized people, that is, those who 
have learned to think, cultivate the ground, 
spin and weave wool and flax into cloth, and 
build houses. You recollect, I dare say, that 
beautiful text of Scripture which speaks of 
the clothing of flowers. " Consider the lilies 
of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, nei- 
ther do they spin : and yet I say unto you, 
That even Solomon in all his glory was not 
arrayed like one of these,' " Matt. vi. 28, 29. 

" Yes, I recollect that text, and always 
think about it when I see a lily." 

" Mr. White says, every one should think 
twice, before he begins to build once, remem- 
bering the saying, ' Fools build houses, and 
wise men live in them.' " 

" That is an odd saying, however." 

" It does not mean that all who build houses 
are foolish, but reproves the thoughtless 
people, who begin to build without being able 
to finish what they begin, or build extrava- 
gantly, and thereby ruin or injure themselves. 
*But now for the house that I am to build." 

" Ah ! that is what I want to hear about." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 123 

"In the first place, I would reckon up 
what the cost would be, taking into consider- 
ation that the expense of building a house is 
almost always more than the builder's calcu- 
lation. I would then choose a dry, airy spot, 
where there was good water." 

" A very good beginning, indeed." 

" I must next either buy the land, or have 
a long lease upon it, because when the lease 
is out, my house will belong to the land- 
owner. It will not answer my purpose to 
build a house without having a long lease." 

" I should never have thought of that." 

" When I begin, especial care shall be paid 
to the foundation, for if that is bad, all that is 
built in a month may come down in a minute." 

" Very true, you have learned to think to 
some purpose." 

" The premises shall be well drained, that 
the house when built may not be damp, and 
proper water-courses shall be made. The 
walls shall not be built up too fast, so that 
they may have proper time to settle ; the 
bricks shall be grey stocks because they look 
better than ugly, staring, red bricks; the 
mortar shall be thoroughly well made, and 
I will see after the bricklayers myself. The 
fire-places and chimneys shall be well tried, 
and if the smoke does not draw up well, or if 



124 LEARNING TO THINK. 

the wind blows down, I will have proper 
chimney pots put on the tops of the chim- 
neys." 

" You go the very way to have a good 
house." 

" As far as I can judge, the carpenter shall 
use none but good, sound, seasoned timber, 
for if the dry rot once gets into it, my house 
will be worth but little. The mason, the 
plasterer, the tiler, the glazier, the painter, 
and the paper-hanger shall find me always 
with them, that I may be satisfied every thing 
is done in a workmanlike manner." 

"You would look them all up most fa- 
mously." 

"The locks and bolts shall be well ex- 
amined, as well as the bells, window fasten- 
ings and water spouts. The grates, especially 
the kitchen grate, with the oven in it, and 
the boiler and the coppers, shall be well 
set." 

" There is nothing but what you seem to 
think of." 

" When my house is built, I must see that 
it is properly furnished. It would take me 
a long time to tell you all the things. One, 
however, I will tell you of 5 but try to guess 
what it is." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 125 

a Why a large table, or a chest of drawers, 
or a bookcase/' 

"No, it is not one of these." 

u Do tell me, then, for I shall never guess 
it." 

"Well, then, it is a family Bible. Mr. 
White says, that the best built house in the 
world, with the very best furniture, would be 
incomplete if it had not the word of God in 
it. My house, then, shall have in it a large 
family Bible." 

"Very good, Henry. I should be better 
able to see to the building of a house now I 
have heard you talk about it." 

" Perhaps so ; but let me question you. It 
is not so much by hearing the thoughts of 
others, that we learn to think, as by deter- 
mining to reflect on things ourselves. Now, 
if you had a house to build, how should you 
proceed?" 

u First, I will reckon up every penny it 
will cost me, to see if I can afford it ; and 
then I will seek out a dry place, that has good 
air, good water, and a good prospect." 

" Very well ! Then you will begin to 
build." 

" No, indeed ! not a brick shall be laid 
down till I have a good long lease. I will 
11* 



126 LEARNING TO THINK. 

never lose my house for want of a lease, I 
warrant you." 

" Oh ! oh ! you are learning to be thought- 
ful indeed." 

" When my lease is safe I will begin, but 
not before the foundation is known to be a 
good one. I am not going to have my house 
tumble on my head, if I can help it." 

" What next will you attend to ?" 

" To the draining, and to the mortar and 
the bricks. No red bricks for me. The brick- 
layer shall not get on too fast : and if the car- 
penter uses any bad timber, he shall be my 
carpenter no longer. All the work people 
shall be looked after ; and when I come to 
furnish my house, I will not forget the large 
family Bible." 

" Who can tell, Charles, but what our con 
versation to-day may be useful to you in 
years to come; but, however this may be, 
learning to think is the very best way to live 
to God's glory, our own good, and the wel- 
fare of those round about us. I am reading 
a book which describes the human body just 
as a house is described : the eyes are the win- 
dows ; and the ears, the nose, and the mouth 
are the doors. Now, if you like, when you 
next come here, we will talk about it, for 



LEARNING TO THINK. 127 

hardly any thing is more likely to set you 
thinking than such a subject." 

" Yes, let us talk about it. I shall like it 
of all things. Ever since you told me why it 
is that a hoop bowls, a peg-top spins, a ball 
bounces, a humming-top makes a noise, and 
a kite flies in the air, I have wanted to learn 
to think more than ever, and if you tell me 
about the human body being like a house, it 
will be just the very thing. Before the clock 
strikes six I shall be here." 

" Very well, you will find me ready for 
you. Good bye !" 



128 LEARNING TO THINK. 




CHAPTER XVI. 

HAD to go on an errand, Henry, 
or I should have been here be- 
fore now ; but it is not six o'clock 
yet, is it ?" 

" No, it has not yet struck, 
Charles ; hark ! it is striking now. If we 
were always as punctual in other things as 
we are when we expect to be pleased, it 
would be well for us. When you first began 
to learn to think, 1 was obliged to ask you to 
come to me, but now that is not necessary, 
for you are ready to come of your own ac- 
cord." 

" Yes, that I am. You told me once, that 
the power of thinking helps us in every thing, 
just like a schoolfellow looking over our 
shoulder, and telling us how to do a sum that 
we know not how to begin. I have thought 
of that many a time since : but now for the 
human figure and the house." 

" There are few things that set forth the 



LEARNING TO THINK. 129 

wisdom, power, and goodness of God more 
than the human figure, to the mind of a think- 
ing person. Every part of it is so well suited 
to the whole, and the whole is so well put 
together, that none but God, who is all wise, 
could have formed such an excellent piece of 
workmanship. If we regard it as a building, 
it is one of the most curious buildings in the 
world." 

" Tell me what it is that is so curious." 

" Nothing if you do not think, but every 
thing if you do." 

" If I were to begin to think about it, I 
should begin with its parts, and then go on to 
its qualities, and after that to its associations, 
just as I did with the flint stone." 

"The human figure is composed of so 
many parts, that it would take up all our time 
to talk about them, even if I knew them ; but 
I do not know one half of their names. We 
should find enough in the human hand to fill 
us with surprise. All that we can do now, I 
think, is to speak of the body under the like- 
ness of a house." 

" Then you will begin with the foundation, 
I dare say, for the dry, airy situation, and the 
long lease will not be wanted." 

" I do not see that the foundation will be 
wanted more than the situation and the lease, 



130 LEARNING TO THINK. 

for the foundation is not the house, but only 
that on which the house stands." 

" Very true ; but come ! I want to hear 
you think aloud about it directly, for what I 
say only hinders you." 

" We may, perhaps, just say this much of 
the foundation of the house of clay we inhabit, 
that its ' foundation is in the dust/ and is 
< crushed before the moth f and its lease is a 
very short one, for < man that is born of a 
woman is of few days, and fall of trouble. He 
cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down : 
he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth 
not/ " 

" Now, then, for the walls !" 

" Not so fast. Let me go on my own way. 
The account I shall give you is not my own, 
it is taken from the book I have just read ; 
but I shall give it you in my own words, and 
add, every now and then, some of my own 
remarks." 

" Ay, that way will do very well." 

" The house we live in has a cupola at the 
top." 

" The cupola is the head, I know." 

" I might say a great deal about the tenant 
that lives in the house, I mean the soul ; but 
no, I will go on about the house itself. The 
frame- work of it is the skeleton, or bone part, 



LEARNING TO THINK. 131 

and a capital frame-work it is ; and the pillars 
are the legs." 

" Well, what else ?" 

" The windows, as I told you, are the eyes ; 
and the doors are the mouth, the ears, and 
the nostrils." 

" Come, you have almost got to the top of 
the house now." 

" The covering of the house is the muscles 
and skin, and the covering of the cupola is 
the muscles, skin, and hair. I should have 
told you that the hinges are the smaller joints, 
for these move up and down, and backwards 
and forwards." 

" So they do, and very capital hinges they 
are." 

u The cupola is the head, and a noble cu- 
pola it makes, just suited to the building, and 
the apartments beneath it ; and now I come 
to the furniture." 

" Ay, what is the furniture ? I want to 
know that more than the other." 

" I can only describe a small part of it. In 
the cupola are the teeth, the tongue, and the 
brain; and the heart and lungs in the apart- 
ments below. The house is, indeed, full of 
furniture from top to bottom." 

" Please to tell me what makes the heart 



132 LEARNING TO THINK. 

beat so. I can feel mine quite plain, when I 
put my hand against my side." 

" If I knew that, Charles, I should know 
more than any man in the world knows. Mr. 
White says, that only God, who knows every 
thing, knows what it is that makes the heart 
beat. It is his almighty power that has 
breathed the spirit of life in us, but what that 
life is we cannot tell." 

"But, really, does nobody in the world 
know what it is that makes the heart move 
up and down ?" 

" The wisest men own that they know no- 
thing about it. The use of the heart is to 
circulate the blood through the frame ; and 
the use of the lungs, which are like a pair of 
bellows, is to breathe with, and to purify the 
blood by circulating pure air all through the 
body. Then there are the veins and arteries 
to spread the blood to every part." 

" Well, I never knew that, and I never 
should have found it out by thinking." 

" The use of the brain, among other things 
is to enable us to think ; and the uses of the 
tongue and the teeth you know as well as I 
can tell you." 

" Oh, yes ; most boys know the use of their 
tongues and their teeth." 

"Now consider, Charles, for a moment, 



LEARNING TO THINK. 133 

what wisdom and power are necessary to 
form such a house as the human body, con- 
sisting, as it does, of more than ten thousand 
parts, and to keep it in repair ! And then 
think of the millions of human beings which 
are in the world, and the millions and millions 
that have lived and died. What a wonderful 
Being must he be who could do all this !" 

" Yes ! there is nobody but God that could 
do it. Millions and millions !" 

" And think again of the millions without 
number of animals, from the lofty giraffe to 
the little mouse ; then of birds, from the harpy 
eagle to the tiny wren ; of fishes, reptiles, and 
insects, that are all alive at the same time, 
living, breathing, eating, and drinking." 

" There is no end to all these things, Hen- 
ry !" 

"Well, now, as I have told you a few 
things about the house we live in, let me hear 
you think aloud about it. Let me hear what 
you think about the human figure." 

" Let me see, there are the head, the body, 
and the limbs, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, 
tongue, heart, lungs, hips, legs, and feet. 
Then come the uses : the head is to think with, 
the eyes to see with, the nose to smell with, 
the ears to hear with, the mouth to eat with, 
and the tongue to talk with, and taste with. 
12 



134 LEARNING TO THINK. 

The heart is to circulate the blood; the lungs 
to breathe with ; the hands to work with ; and 
the legs and feet to walk with. And now for 
its associations. The human figure puts me 
in mind of young people and old people. 
Some of the young people are at a Sunday 
school, reading in their classes, or on their 
knees at prayer; and some are at play, spin- 
ning their tops." 

" Very good !" 

" Some of the old people are beggars, going 
from door to door ; some are reading their 
Bibles; others are walking, with sticks in 
their hands, for fresh air on a summer's even- 
ing." 

" Well done, Charles \" 

" I hardly know whether I can think of 
any thing else. Oh, yes, there is this : if the 
house we live in be so wonderful, how much 
more wonderful God must be, who made 
it!" 

" A very good finish, indeed. It is a won- 
derful thing, Charles, that the house we live 
in, after being made with such wisdom and 
care, should be allowed so soon to moulder 
in the dust ; but, then, God can raise it again 
more beautiful than it was before. Fare- 
well!" 

" Farewell, Henry, till to-morrow." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 135 



CHAPTER XVII. 

F^^^^^HY, Charles, you are indeed 
|j| v| \M^\ early. I did not expect you for 
two or three hours." 

" I dare say not, Henry; but 
I am going out with my cousin 
to-day, to see the ruins of an old abbey, and 
so I want to make sure of my lesson about 
learning to think, before I go." 

" There is nothing like being in earnest in 
a matter ; let us begin directly. I want to 
convince you of the great advantage of think- 
ing on a subject in a proper way : when we 
know how to divide the subject of our thoughts 
aright, we can understand it much more 
clearly." 

" I hardly understand you." 

" I mean, that sometimes a subject which 
is difficult as a whole, becomes very easy 
when rightly divided. When we spoke of 
the house we live in, you know, we divided 
it into the lower story, the upper story, and 



136 LEARNING TO THINK. 

the cupola, and that enabled us to describe it 
much better than if we had spoken of it alto- 
gether." 

"Yes, so it did." 

" Look at this piece of paper, it is covered 
over with blots and dots, of different sizes, 
all in confusion. Now, if you wished to 
speak about these blots and dots to me, you 
would not know one from another. If you 
pointed to one blot, what would you call it, 
so that we might both know it again ?" 

" Oh, I would say, that blot in the middle 
of the paper, or that dot at the top." 

" But there are, you see, twenty dots and 
blots in the middle ; and then, if the paper 
happened to be turned the other way up- 
wards, what is now the top would be the bot- 
tom, so that you would be wrong altogether." 

" Then I would say, the large blot, or the 
little dot." 

" That plan would not do at all, for I have 
on purpose made many of the blots exactly 
the same size as others, and the dots too." 

" I should not know how to go about it at 
all." 

" A little thought will bring order out of 
this confusion, so that you will be able to 
talk about any single dot with as little diffi- 

i 




* LEARNING TO THINK. 137 

culty as if there were only a very few of 
them on the paper." 

" I would give a shilling, if I had it, rather 
than not know how that can be done. If 
learning to think will do that, it will do al- 
most any thing." 

" You shall see how easily it can be done. 
First, I make a mark on that end of the paper 
which is to be kept uppermost ; then, with my 
ruler and pencil, I draw lines, say half an inch 
from each other, all across the paper, and 
cross them with other lines. See ! the paper 
is now covered all over with squares. Now, 
if I number the squares 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so 
on, till every square has a number, I can talk 
about any blot or dot on the paper." 

" You may talk about it, but how shall you 
know one from another any better now than 
you did before ?" 

" Because I can say the blot in the middle 
of number 3 square, or the dot at the bottom 
of number 20 square, as the case may be ; 
and if you had a piece of paper, blotted and 
dotted, and squared and numbered, just like 
it, we might write to each other about any 
single blot or dot, if we were in different parts 
of the world, and understand which it was, as 
well as if we were together pointing toit with 
our fingers." 

12* 



138 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" That is famous, however ! I could not 
have believed it. As soon as I get home I 
will blot a piece of paper, and square, and 
number it just in the same way, that I will/* 

" And when you have done so, what good 
will it do you ? To what use can you put 
it?" 

" Why, that I cannot tell." 

" You must not suppose that I have blot- 
ted and dotted this paper only to amuse you. 
I did it that I might set you thinking, for by 
this simple contrivance many useful things 
have been done in the world." 

"What, by drawing lines on a piece of 
blotted paper ?" i 

" Not that exactly ; but by the same prin- \ 
ciple." 

" If you had a large picture, and wished to 
make a small one from it exact in every part, 
you should draw lines across it, dividing it 
into large squares, and make the sane num- \J(Sj 
ber of squares on your drawing paper. Then, 
by putting in the smali squares just what you 
see in the large squares, you will have a cor/" 
rect copy of your picture on a small scale." >*• 

" So I should ; and I will try it, you may 
depend upon it." 

" If, instead of making squares on my blot- • 

ted paper, I had drawn any other forms and 



LEARNING TO THINK. 139 

numbered them, it would have answered the 
same purpose." 

" I suppose it would." 

'* Learned men, in this manner, have so 
divided and classed the stars in the heavens, 
that they can talk about any star they please 
to each other, and be well understood, though 
you know that hundreds of stars appear to 
be of the same size." 

" But they have not done this by drawing 
lines across the skies ?" 

" No ; but they looked at the stars, and 
drew lines round them in their imagination^-- £5 
forming one group of stars into the form ofa 
bear, another into that of a ram, and so ohrv 
Then, you know, they were able to say, the 
largest star in the tail of the bear, or th^ "*x 
smallest in the head of the ram. In this way, 
by forming the stars into forms of some kind 
or other, they were able, as I said, to talk 
about any particular star. After that, they 
drew these imaginary forms on paper, and on 
globes, with the stars belonging to them, so 
that by looking on the paper or the globes, 
they might talk or write about the stars by 
day as well as by night, just the same as if 
they had the heavens spread out before 
them." 

" Well, that is clever. I see now why you 



140 LEARNING TO THINK. 

blotted and dotted the paper; it lias made 
the thing plain to me." 

" The same principle has been made use of 
with regard to the earth. Imaginary lines 
have been drawn across it, called latitude, and 
other lines across them, called longitude ; and 
these lines being numbered, are great helps 
to sailors, when they want to know what part 
of the world they are in, when they are at 
sea, a long way from land. The earth used 
to be divided into four parts : it is now di- 
vided into six. These six great parts are again 
divided into lesser parts, such as countries, 
kingdoms, counties, and parishes : and when 
all these are drawn on paper, as you see them 
in maps, we can describe in what part of the 
world any place is situated ; and others, when 
sitting by the fire-side with the map before 
them, can understand where a place is, just as 
well as if they were travelling over the very 
places we were speaking of." 

" I do want to be able to think, for think- 
ing seems to tell one about every thing." 

" Thinking clearly and properly is a great 
help in gaining knowledge. Think, for a mo- 
ment, what a number of trees and flowers 
there must be in the world. Now, all of these 
have been divided into classes, so that the mo- 
ment a flower, or tree, with the blossom upon 



LEARNING TO THINK. 141 

it, is seen, it is known to what class it be- 
longs." 

"Indeed!" 

" Yes ; and the same with the living crea- 
tures of the earth. You would be surprised 
if you knew how much knowledge a little 
thinking gives a person. Now, listen sNjdp- 
ment. Suppose a strange creature was found,-, 
that nobody had ever seen before ; a thinking- 
person would find out a great deal about itj 
when another would find out nothing." 

" What could he find out about it ?" 

" Why, suppose the creature was covered 
with feathers, and had large wings, like the 
kite, a thinking person would directly con- 
clude that the creature flew in the air ; but if 
it had very small wings in proportion to its 
body, like those of the ostrich, he would con- 
clude that it could not fly, but that its wings 
were only meant to assist it in its flight. If it 
had webbed feet, he would know at once that 
it was accustomed to swim on the water, like 
the swan, the goose, or the duck. If it had 
four feet with hoofs, like a horse, and no 
feathers, and if it had no sharp tearing teeth, 
but only cutting and grinding teeth, he 
would conclude that it could not climb a tree, 
not being able to lay hold of the branches ; 
and that it fed on grass or leaves, because if 



142 LEARNING TO THINK. 

it fed on living creatures it would have had 
claws to lay hold of them, and sharp tearing 
teeth to eat them with." 

" These things I should never have thought 
of." 

" Then, if it had paws shaped like the hu- 
man hand, with joints, he would conclude 
that it was accustomed to climb trees, just as 
the monkey does ; and if, instead of these, it 
had strong, sharp claws, and sharp tearing 
teeth, he would say, with confidence, that the 
unknown creature lived, like the lion and 
tiger, upon living creatures." 

" You have set me thinking now, however ; 
when I go home, I shall set about blotting, 
dotting, squaring, and numbering a piece of 
paper directly. Then I shall try to copy the 
picture of a house and its windows on a little 
bit of paper ; nor shall I forget how the stars 
in the sky and the different parts of the earth 
are divided. After that will come the trees 
and flowers, and living creatures." 

" Before you go, let me just try your powers 
of thought, by asking you two or three simple 
questions. If you heard of a strange creature 
being found, and that its teeth were the size 
of a walnut, should you know by that how 
Dig it was ?" 

" No 5 but I should say at once it was 



LEARNING TO THINK. 143 

a large creature ; because a little creature 
would not have large teeth. It would eat so 
little, that it would not want them." 

" Very good. You have given me a very 
good answer. But suppose the creature had 
fins, should you know by that how it got 
its living?" 

" No, I could not tell that. But I should 
know that it lived in the water ; because its 
fins would be of no use to it any where else." 

"Very good, again. And, lastly, if it had 
a thick furry hide, could you tell whether it 
inhabited a hot country or a cold one ?" 

" I should think a cold one, and that the 
thick fur was to keep it warm." 

" Capital ! Once more, farewell !" 



V 



ji 



144 LEARNING TO THINK. 




CHAPTER XVIII. 

HAVE brought you my piece of 
paper, Henry, blotted and dot- 
ted, and divided into squares, that 
you may see I have been think- 
ing about what you told me." 
" Yes, I see you have been very industri- 
ously at work ; but where are the numbers 
to your squares ?" 

" Oh ! on the other side. I thought the 
figures would be plainer there, than if put 
among the blots and dots." 

" So they are ; but, then, you have the 
trouble to turn over the paper every time you 
want to refer to them. Did you draw a house 
on a small scale, from a larger one ?" 

" Yes, here it is ! You see how small the 
squares are on one paper, and how large on 
the other." 

" I see ! You have done it tolerably well, 
but your house leans a great deal to one 
side. Mr. White says, that almost all young 



LEARNING TO THINK. 145 

draughtsmen draw houses, and chimneys, and 
trees, leaning to the right hand, and that, if 
they would only try to lean them a little to 
the left, most likely they would succeed in 
drawing them upright." 

" But why do they make them lean to the 
right ?" 

Mr. White thinks it is because they are 
done with the right hand. If a boy were 
left-handed, he thinks he would draw houses 
leaning to the left. I saw a picture to-day 
of a house being moved altogether from one 
place to another." r 

" How could they do that ? What a weight 
it must be." V 

" Yes 5 but very great weights may be used 
with proper instruments. Machines of very 
great power are now in use. After a while, 
you must begin to think about the different 
powers by which great weights are moved." 

" Do you know anything about them ?" 

" Not a great deal. I know that what are 
called the six mechanical powers are the lever, 
the pulley, the wheel and axle, the inclined 
plane, the wedge, and the screw." 

a I cannot think how you have contrived 
to learn all these things. Please to tell me 
what you know about the six powers." 

" I can soon tell you the little that I know 
13 



/ 



146 LEARNING TO THINK. 

and if you will think about it, not only now, 
but afterwards, it may lead you on to get a 
great deal more knowledge than you sup- 
pose." 

" Now, then, for the six powers. The lever 
comes first." 

" Yes, the lever comes first. If you will 
consider, Charles, you will see, at once, that a 
working man is greatly helped in his em- 
ployment by his tools. A man cannot scratch 
up the ground with his fingers, that he may 
sow seed, without great labour and pain, so 
he uses a spade ; he cannot knock a nail, or 
bore a hole in a piece of wood, with his hand, 
so he makes use of a hammer and a gimlet ; 
and as he cannot cut up a tree into boards 
with his knife, he uses a saw. You see, then, 
that he is greatly assisted in his work by the 
spade, the hammer, the gimlet, and the saw." 

" Yes ! I hardly know how he could go 
on without them/'" 

" In like manner, if man can find out a new 
power, that is, a force, wherewith he can do 
easily what he could not do before without 
much trouble, it is of great use to him ; and 
thus it is that, all over the world, men try to 
make use of the powers they can find. When 
a man puts a load on a horse's back which he 
cannot carry himself, he makes use of the 



LEARNING TO THINK. 147 

power of the horse. When he employs a run- 
ning stream to turn a wheel, he uses the power 
of running water; and when he sets up the 
sails of a ship, or of a windmill, he makes use 
of the power of the wind." 

" So he does. You make me think of things 
so differently to what I used to do." 

"The truth is, Charles, that, like most 
young people, you never, perhaps, gave your- 
self the trouble to think of them at all." 

" I dare say that you are right, Henry ; but 
you have told me nothing yet about the le- 
ver." 

"If you had a bank of sand to remove 
from one place to another, though you could 
not carry it away all at once, yet you might 
remove it by a little at a time ; but if you 
wished to take a heavy piece of timber, or a 
huge stone, from one place to another, you 
would be at a fault, because you could not, 
as in the case of the sand, take it away by 
degrees. It must all go together." 

" Then I must get two, or three, strong 
horses to pull it away." 

" But it is not every one who has two or 
three strong horses at his command; and, then, 
if the tree or stone can be moved without 
them, so much the better : the lever is the 
very thing to do this." 



148 LEARNING TO THINK. 

"Now you are coming to it !" 

" A lever is a bar of any kind, either of iron 
or wood, with a prop, or support, near the 
end of it. See ! Here I place two books on 
the table close together, and steady one of 
them with my hand. Now, if I put the point 
of my knife between the two books, it be- 
comes a lever; for if I bear down the handle, 
the blade, by resting against the book which 
I hold steady, pushes away the other book. 
The longer the handle of the knife, the easier 
is the book pushed away. You have only to 
suppose that the book pushed away is a tree, 
or a large stone, and my knife a long bar of 
iron or wood, to understand how a great 
weight can be moved by a lever." 

" That is very clever, and I must think it 
over and over again." 

" Yes, that is the way to improve in learn- 
ing to think. When you dig in the garden 
your spade is a lever, for when you press 
down the handle one side of the spade rests 
on the solid ground, and the other forces up 
the earth. The longer the handle of the 
spade, the easier is the earth forced up." 

" Why, it was only yesterday that my spade 
was broken ; and when I tried to dig with the 
short broken handle, I could hardly force up 
the ground at all." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



149 



Ci That was the case, no doubt. When you 
have learned to think a little more, and I my- 
self am wiser than I am, we may, perhaps, 
talk more about the lever. The second pow- 
er is the pulley." 

" Ay, the pulley 5 now for the pulley !' 




" The pulley, as you know, is a wheel with 

a groove, or hollow, round it ; this is fixed in 

a block of wood. If a cord be passed over 

the pulley, it enables a man to lift a weight 

13* 



150 LEARNING TO THINK. 

with much greater ease than he otherwise 
could do ; and if he made use of several pul- 
leys, a still greater weight might be lifted. 
The greater the number of the pulleys, the 
easier is the weight removed. " 

" A pulley must be very useful indeed. 
What is the next power ?" 

" The wheel and axle ; and this power is 
used in many machines. In large ware- 
houses, or wharfs, we see it in the crane ; and 
on board ship, we see it in the capstan and 
windlass, for winding up the anchor or great 
weights. The power it has is owing to the 
wheel being larger than the axle ; and this is 
like having a large leverage. You can raise 
a bucket of water from a well with a wind- 
lass easily, because the handle you turn round, 
acts the part of a large wheel, or lever, while 
the axle, round which the rope passes, is but 
small ; but every power requires thought to 
understand it." 

" The wedge was the next. Oh no, the 
inclined plane." 

" An inclined plane is a gradual slope, 
whether it be on the ground, or on a floor, or 
on any other place, by which heavy bodies 
may be raised." 

" But how can a slope raise a heavy 
weight ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 151 

" I do not say that it can ; but it enables us 
to do so. When you want to go up to bed, 
if the stairs were removed, you could not 
climb up the walls, for they would be too 
steep for you." 

" Yes, that they would." 

" And if you were to put a ladder straight 
up the staircase, you would find it rather dif- 
ficult to go up ; but the stairs are an inclined 
plane, though a steep one, and they enable 
you to go up to bed without difficulty." 

" Yes ; but I could not go up so steep an 
inclined plane without the stairs, could I ?" 

" No ; the stairs enable you to ascend a 
steeper inclined plane than you could other- 
wise go up. But consider, there is a chalk 
hill just beyond the turnpike, the road at the 
bottom of it is level with the floor of the turn- 
pike house, while the road at the top of it is 
much higher than the chimney. Now, this 
road is an inclined plane, and horses draw up 
heavily-laden wagons, which, were it steeper, 
they could not draw up at all." 

" I see the use of an inclined plane." 

" The next power is the wedge, which is a 
piece of wood or metal, thin on one side, and 
Xhick on the other. If you place the edge, or 
thin side, in a crack of a piece of timber, and 
then strike the back, or thick side, repeatedly 



152 LEARNING TO THINK. 

with a hammer, by little and little it will split 
the timber." 

" Aye, I have split up a chump of wood 
myself in that way ; but I shall think a little 
more about it now." 

" By putting a number of wedges under a 
ship lying on the stocks, and striking them, 
the whole ship, weighing more than a thou- 
sand tons, is gradually raised up. The last 
power is that of the screw, and this, like the 
wedge, acts very gradually. It has the ad- 
vantage of both the inclined plane and the 
lever, for the power that turns it may be cal- 
led a lever, and the worm may be called an 
inclined plane. The power of large screws is 
wonderful." 

* I only hope that I shall remember what 
you have told me. We have had a very 
good conversation, and if I do not learn to 
think after all your kindness, I shall deserve 
to be pointed at for my folly." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 153 




CHAPTER XIX. 

LEASE, Henry, to teach me 
how to think about the sea. I 
have seen a picture of a ship- 
wreck, and I want to be able to 
think about the sea better than 
I can now do." 

" Well, that is very odd ! Why, it was on 
the subject of the sea that Mr. White talked 
to me for an hour yesterday." 

"Oh, then, you can tell me every thing 
about it." 

"' There is something else that I want to 
tell you first ; it is, that I am going to see my 



154 LEARNING TO THINK. 

uncle Hammonds, so that I shall not be able 
to help you in learning to think after to-night, 
till I come back again." 

" I am very sorry, indeed, to hear that. I 
shall forget half of what I now remember." 

" No, no ! That must not be the case, for 
I have spoken to Mr. White about you, and 
he says that, if you will go to him while I 
am away, he will help you all in his power." 

" Does he say so ? But I shall be afraid to 
go. It will not be like talking with you." 

"You have no reason to fear; for Mr. 
White is as kind and as friendly as any one 
you ever knew. Before you have spent half 
an hour in his company you will be as much 
at home with him as you are with me." 

" Shall I ? Well, then, I will go to him ; 
but I am very sorry you are leaving home." 

" And now, what shall we say about the 
sea. Shall I speak of its great length, and 
breadth, and depth ; of its tides, and roaring 
waves ; its islands, sands, coral rocks, and ice- 
bergs ; or of its pearls, sea-weed, shells, and 
fish : for Mr. White spoke to me about them 
all ?" 

" I should like to have heard him ; but 
there will never be time to speak about them 
all. How large is the sea ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 155 

"In some parts it is thousands of miles 
broad, and thousands of miles long." 

" And how deep ?" 

" That no one can tell, for the bottom of it 
has never been found ; but a writer says, i that 
the ocean would fill up to the very brim 
twenty-two millions of cisterns, if every cis- 
tern was a mile deep and a mile long/ Think, 
Charles, what a strong thing a whale must 
be, whose mouth is wide enough to take in a 
boat, and yet ten thousand whales could not 
stop the tide for a moment, when it comes 
roaring along." 

" If the whales are so strong, what a strong 
thing the sea itself must be! Why the 
strength of a whale must be nothing to it." 

" Very true ! Mr. White says, that all 
thinking people, when any object is set before 
them that strikingly sets forth either the wis- 
dom, the goodness, or the power of the Al- 
mighty, feel inclined to pause. The ocean is 
indeed strong. 

" 'But what, if such be the strength of the sea, 
Must the power of its mighty Maker be V " 

" Aye, what, indeed !" 

" Now, if you really want to think about 
the sea, Charles, first remember that it is God's 
sea. ' The sea is His, and he made it : and 
his hands formed the dry land/ Psa. xcv, 5." 



156 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Yes, I ought not to forget that." 

" Then think that it has been rolling back- 
wards and forwards for thousands of years as 
obediently as a little child, never so much as 
once disobeying the commands of its Almighty 
Maker." 

"This is the way that I want to think 
about the sea." 

" Think next, that it is the great highway, 
joining one country to another, so that those 
who live the farthest apart may visit each 
other in ships, and trade with one another." 

" Do you say, the sea joins one country to 
another? Why, I thought that it divided 
them." 

"Mr. White says it joins them; for if the 
water were land, it would be inhabited by dif- 
ferent people, who, by their different laws, 
customs, languages, and wars, would separate 
us from those distant countries which we now 
are continually visiting." 

"No doubt he is right. I shall try to 
remember in future, that the sea, which I 
thought divided countries far from each other, 
really joins them all." 

" Think, Charles, of the abundance of food 
that the sea has supplied mankind with, in 
turtle, turbot, salmon, codfish, herrings, lob- 
sters, oysters, muscles, cockles, and a hundred 



LEARNING TO THINK. 157 

other kinds. Why, there are shoals of fish, 
many miles in breadth, come swarming along 
in different parts every season." 

" I never heard of such a thing !" 

" Well : Have you enough to think of 
now, or shall I go on ?" 

" You have given me enough to think of, 
indeed ; and yet I want you to go on." 

" Besides supplying us with food, it waters 
and refreshes the earth at a distance from 
it." 

" How can it do that?" 

" I will tell you, for Mr. White explained 
it all to me. He said, that when the sun- 
beams fell on the surface of the sea, it drew 
up millions of hogsheads of water into the 
air, though we could not see it ; by what is 
called evaporation, the water becomes vapour; 
and that the winds carried the steam over the 
land, on which it fell, making it abundantly 
fruitful." 

" I never heard a word of this before, and 
it quite astonishes me." 

" When we are astonished at the wonders 
of creation, we should never lose sight of His 
almighty hand who performed them. Besides 
all this, the sea provides us with an amazing 
amount of salt, as well as with pearls, coral, 
shells, sponge, and other articles, both of use 
14 



158 LEARNING TO THINK. 

and for ornament. Having said so much 
about the sea, let me leave all its storms and 
tempests, whirlpools and waterspouts, whales 
and walruses, sharks and shipwrecks, and 
listen awhile to your thoughts about it. You 
have thought aloud very well on some other 
subjects, now let me hear you think about the 
sea." 

" Well, I will do so as well as I can. The 
sea is a very great pond, or space of water, in 
which God has put large fish and small fish 
for our use." 

" Very good ! A very good beginning." 

"It obeys God when it is rolling about, 
roaring and raging, as much as it does when 
it is still and quiet." 

" Go on." 

" When we think about the sea, it should 
tell us of God's goodness, and make us love 
him ; and when we think of its roaring and 
raging, it should tell us of his power, and 
make us fear him." 

" Come ! You have thought very well upon 
the W&, and I hope you will not forget what 
you have said. Go on learning to think, and 
learning to think aright, and you will have 
reason to be thankful for it all the days of 
your life." 

" How many things we have talked about 



LEARNING TO THINK. 159 

since you first stopped me bowling my hoop 
along ! and how little did I think of your 
teaching me, night after night, as you have 
done ! I wish you were not going." 

" Oh, the time will soon pass away, and 
Mr. White can help you along faster than I 
can." 

a Thank you ! thank you ! Farewell ! for 
I see that our time is quite up. A pleasant 
journey to you." 

" Farewell ! farewell ! Be sure that you go 
to Mr. White in time, Charles, for he likes 
people to be punctual/ 

" Depend upon it, Henry, I will be with 
him by six o'clock." 



160 LEARNING TO THINK. 




CHAPTER XX. 

ELL, my young friend, you are 
come ; I am very glad to see 
you. Henry told me that you 
would be sure to be here by 
six o'clock." 
" Thank you for being so kind as to let 
me come. The last word that Henry said to 
me was this : < Be sure that you go to Mr. 
White in time, Charles, for he likes people to 
be punctual. 5 " 

"He is very punctual himself; and, to 
speak the truth, has improved very fast ever 
since he began to learn to think. He knows 
ten times as much now, as he did before." 

"He seems to me, sir, to know almost 
every thing." 

" He is certainly getting on to be a very 
thoughtful boy; but we must not lose our 
time in talking about him. Henry tells me 
that you have already made some progress. 
Do you think you could tell me why a peg- 



LEARNING TO THINK. 161 

top spins, a ball bounces, a humming-top 
makes a noise, and a kite flies in the air ?" 

" Oh ! Henry has told you all about these 
things, I see." 

" Could you think aloud, now, about a 
knife, a piece of flint, a bullet, and a bit of 
cork ? Or of food, clothing, fire, a pipe, a pin, 
loaf sugar, alum, and a mahogany table ?" 

" Why, sir, you know all that Henry has 
talked about to me !" 

"Well, I believe that is pretty near the 
truth, for he has always told me what has 
passed between you, and asked me how he 
should go on with you. Do you remember 
what he told you about a chair, a wheelbar- 
row, and an umbrella ?" 

" Oh yes, very well ; and about the steam- 
engine, safety-lamp, microscope, telescope, 
telegraph, a ship, and the mariner's compass." 

"Well, your time has not been thrown 
away. He asked you, I think, a great many 
questions, that you might use your wits and 
look sharp about you. I dare say that you 
know now, very well, which is heavier, a 
pound of lead, or a pound of feathers." 

" 1 know that there is not the least differ- 
ence in the world between them ; but it puz- 
zled me when Henry first asked me." 

" Did you ever make any inquiry of him 



162 LEARNING TO THINK. 

about such things as a squirt, a pipe, and a 
weather-house ?" 

" Yes ! About all of them ; and he ex- 
plained to me how it was that the sun put 
out the fire ; and made it quite clear that the 
earth was round/' 

"Did Henry ever tell you that thoughts 
grow ; and talk to you about flowers ?" 

"Yes, he did; and I was quite surprised 
at what he said." 

"And he was a little surprised at what 
you said, when you thought aloud about 
birds ?" 

"If he had not put me in the way, I 
should never have been able to say any thing 
about them." 

" You know, I believe, that there are dif- 
ferent ways of doing things, and that we 
ought never to think lightly of those who 
adopt a different mode to our own." 

" Yes ; Henry explained all that to me, 
and showed me how foolish I was in my 
thoughts when I pretended to build a house ; 
and spoke a great deal about < the house we 
live in/ that is, the human body." 

" Some of his questions were very curious, 
when he tried to sharpen your wits by com- 
pelling you to think. He sadly puzzled 
you." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 163 

" Yes ; but I should be able to answer a 
little better now." 

" Which do you think is the best way of 
conquering an ill-natured, spiteful school- 
fellow ?" 

" I would threaten to tell his master of him 
if he did not act better." 

" There is a better way than that." 

" Perhaps you would give him a good 
beating." 

6 No, for that would most likely make him 
worse ; to do him a deed of kindness would 
be the best way, in my opinion. When I 
was at school, I had a sad spiteful school- 
fellow, and I hated him with all my heart ; 
but this was wrong. I then altered my course, 
and prayed for him ; and one day, when he 
was sadly distressed, not being able to do his 
sums, I took an opportunity of telling him 
how to do them : he never acted spitefully to 
me again." 

u Well, that plan answered very well." 

" And no wonder at all ; for it was in agree- 
ment with God's word, which says, < Love 
your enemies, bless them that curse you, 
do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them which despitefully use you, and perse- 
cute you," Matt. v. 44. 

" Before Henry left home, he told me, i You 



164 LEARNING TO THINK. 

need not be at all afraid of Mr. White, for he 
is so kind and friendly, that, before you have 
been with him half an hour, you will feel as 
much at home with him as you do with me !" 

" And you find it so, do you ?" 

" Yes, indeed I do." 

" Well, I am glad of that ; for, to tell you 
the truth, I have been talking in Henry's 
way, that you might feel quite at home with 
me. It will give me great pleasure, in his 
absence, to help you in learning to think ; but, 
after all, your success will depend chiefly on 
yourself. Let it be your constant aim to think 
reverently of God, and kindly of your fellow 
creatures, and to exercise judgment in all 
things left to your decision. You have made 
a short visit to me to-day ; the next time you 
will, perhaps, stop longer." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 165 




CHAPTER XXI. 

H, here you are, Charles ! Now, 
without losing a moment, let me 
see if I can do something in the 
way of improving your judg- 
ment." 

" Henry told me that by learning to think 
my judgment would be improved." 

" It is not thinking much, but thinking 
wisely, that increases judgment. Now, listen 
to me. Good and evil, right and wrong, and 
truth and falsehood are so mingled together 
in the world, that without a sound judgment 
we are always liable to be in error. If things 
were all black or white, it would require no 
care to distinguish them ; but when they are 
of all grades and shades of colour, much care 
is required. Do you understand me ?" 
" Yes, I think I do." 

" Now, mind that you are on your guard 
in listening to a little tale that I will tell you. 
I shall soon perceive if you have any judg- 



166 LEARNING TO THINK. 

ment. A poor bald-headed old man, who did 
not know his letters, set off by himself to a 
distant common, a long way from any houses, 
to set up a school there. He had but five hun- 
dred dollars in his pocket, and — " 

" Five hundred dollars ! Why, you said he 
was a poor man. How could a poor man 
have five hundred dollars?" 

" Very true, Charles. I see that you are 
thinking, and that you are not without judg- 
ment. Let us suppose there is some mistake 
about his having five hundred dollars ; let us 
suppose he had no money. Well, on went 
the poor old man, his gray hair blown about 
by the winds — " 

" Gray hair ! You said he was bald- 
headed." 

" Did I ? Then I suppose there must be a 
mistake in his having gray hairs. No sooner 
did he reach the common than he called at 
one of the cottages — " 

" At one of the cottages ! How could he 
do that, when the common was a long way 
from any houses ?" 

" Did I say so ? Then there must be a 
mistake about his calling at a cottage. Well, 
he set to work to build his school, and — " 

" How could he begin to build a school, if 



LEARNING TO THINK. 167 

he had no money, and was alone on a com- 
mon ?" 

" Did I say he was by himself? Then there 
must be some mistake about his building a 
school. 7 ' 

" It seems to me to be nothing but mis- 
takes, for, if he could have built a school, 
where would he have gone for his scholars, 
when there were no houses there ?." 

" You are right, Charles. I filled my tale 
with mistakes on purpose to see if you had 
judgment enough to find them out, and I am 
pleased that you have discovered them. Be- 
fore we know how to judge right in any case 
we must see it in its different bearings. Two 
knights are said to have fought a battle toge- 
ther, in ancient times, about a shield ; looking 
on one side of it, one of them declared it was 
of gold, while the other, looking on the other 
side of it, would have it that it was made of 
silver. Now, had they prudently examined 
the shield on both sides, instead of fighting 
about it, they would have discovered that one 
side of it was silver, and the other gold." 

" They had not much judgment, however. 
They had never learned to think." 

" When a witness is called into a court of 
justice he is sworn to speak the truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; and 



1GS LEARNING TO THINK. 

I will show you how differently a case may 
be represented. If I were to tell you that a 
poor lad, the son of an honest day-labourer, 
went into a shop, and asked the old woman 
who kept it to change him a sixpence, and 
that, after giving him the change, she called 
him all manner of names, you would think 
the woman was an ugly old crosspatch, and 
the poor lad an ill-used person." 

" Yes, that I should." 

" Now this, remember, is a case wherein 
the truth is spoken, but not the whole truth. 
A person of judgment, thinking upon this 
matter, says to himself, if the lad had done 
nothing more than what has been reported, 
why should the old lady be bitter against 
him ? He, therefore, prudently makes further 
inquiry, when he discovers that the sixpence 
which the boy changed was a bad one. This 
alters the case at once ; and now, instead of 
pitying the boy, and feeling angry at the old 
woman, we pity the latter, and agree that the 
lad deserves a good flogging." 

" So we do. I was wrong, certainly." 

" But suppose a witness comes forward in 
the boy's favour, saying, that though the boy 
did offer a bad sixpence, he did not know it 
to be a bad one, and that his father sent him 
with it to get it changed." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 169 

" Then I should say that, after all, the poor 
lad was ill used, and that the old woman was 
too hard upon him." 

" It might be concluded so at once by a 
thoughtless person, but a prudent one would 
not be so easily satisfied. What should you 
think, if you went straight to the boy's father, 
who not only denied having given his son the 
sixpence, but declared that he had already 
given him two separate floggings for doing 
the same dishonest thing." 

" I never knew the like ! Why the lad 
was a cheat and a thief, after all." 

"You have here an instance wherein, 
though a case is represented in different ways, 
judgment is enabled to discover the truth. 
If we were to have you in the jury-box, be- 
fore you had learned to think more, the inno- 
cent would most likely be condemned, and 
the guilty go free. A little deliberation is ne- 
cessary for us all, if we would act prudently. 
One night, when taking my walk, I some- 
what suddenly began to run, when instantly 
a man followed me as hard as he could scam- 
per, crying out, f Stop thief! stop thief V I 
stopped, and the man came up, out of breath, 
and asked me if I had seen him? 'Seen 
whom V said I. ' Why, the thief/ replied he ; 
' he ran this way like a shot.' I then told 
15 



170 LEARNING TO THINK. 

him that I was the person he mistook for the 
thief, and should be obliged to him if he 
would tell me what I had stolen. This made 
him, no doubt, feel very foolish in having 
been so hasty in his judgment, for he slunk 
away directly." 

a He was hasty, indeed." 

" I once heard of a culprit being brought 
before a magistrate for stealing a spade. ' I 
can bring two witnesses that saw him take it,' 
said the man who appeared against him. 
'And 1/ observed the culprit, 'can bring 
twenty witnesses, your worship, who did not 
see me take it.' c Set the man at liberty/ said 
the magistrate, ' for it is ten to one in his fa- 
vour.' Now, what say you, Charles, was the 
magistrate right or wrong ?" 

" Well, I hardly know." 

" Hardly know ! Why, do you not see 
that the culprit had twenty witnesses, while 
the other had but two ?" 

" I suppose the magistrate was right, then." 

a And I suppose he was altogether wrong. 
Why, the twenty witnesses who did not see 
the culprit take the spade might have been a 
mile from the place when the spade was 
stolen. Now, be a little more on your guard. 
What should you say, if after hearing a shriek 
you ran to the spot, and saw one man lying 



LEARNING TO THINK. 171 

on the ground, and another running away 
with a bloody knife in his hand ?" 

" What would I say ? I would cry after 
the runner, ' Stop him ! stop him !' and, if he 
was overtaken, I would have him, if I could, 
dragged to prison, or before a magistrate, di- 
rectly, as a murderer." 

" So I thought ; but, in so doing, you might 
be as much out of order as the man who ran 
after me." 

" What ! when I saw one lie dead, and the 
other running off with a knife in his hand ?" 

" There would be enough, certainly, to 
make you think a murder had been commit- 
ted 5 but, in such a case, it would be wise, be- 
fore hurrying him off to prison, to hear what 
he had to say for himself." 

" Why, what could he have to say for him- 
self? Not a word, for he would know him- 
self to be guilty." 

" He might say this : that he was by trade 
a butcher, and that, as he was killing a sheep, 
he heard a. cry ; lifting up his head, he saw a 
gentleman stagger and fall ; hastening to him 
he found him in a fit, and, therefore, without 
stopping to lay down his knife, he ran off 
towards his own house, which was at a little 
distance, for a glass of water. Every word 
of this might be true ; and, on examining the 



172 LEARNING TO THINK. 

man on the ground, you would find that 
there was no wound ; and thus, instead of 
feeling anger against him, and hurrying him 
off to prison, or before a magistrate, as a mur- 
derer, you ought rather to admire him for his 
humanity." 

" Who could have thought it possible ? I 
never shall, I am afraid, learn to think pro- 
perly." 

" Oh, never fear ! You are, however, sadly 
too hasty. You must, as I say, look at a 
thing in all its bearings, to ascertain the 
truth." 

" When you point out my error to me, I 
can see it, but, the worst of it is, I cannot see 
it when left to myself." 

" ' Rome was not built in a day/ and you 
have not begun to think long. There are so 
many cases in which judgment has to decide 
on the character and lives of others, that every 
one ought to try anxiously to attain it. To 
set a rogue at liberty would be a bad thing, 
but oh, how sad, through want of thought 
and judgment, to be the means of depriving 
a fellow-creature of liberty or life !" 

" Yes, that would be very sad." 

" Now, remember the few following hints. 
If your judgment is ever required about any 
thing, first take pains clearly to understand 



LEARNING TO THINK. .173 

the case, whether it be a trifle, or an affair of 
importance. Then pause a little, to consider 
whether what you have heard agrees with 
itself. When I told you of the poor man 
having five hundred dollars, you found out 
that his poverty and his money did not agree. 
Next consider whether you want more infor- 
mation to enable you to decide, or whether 
you have not already more than the truth. 
Then take into your thoughts the particular 
circumstances of the case, for a man will do 
that when in anger, in distress, or temptation, 
which he would not do at other times. Any 
one attending to these points, would be sure 
to increase in judgment." 

" I am sure that my judgment ought to 
improve, with all the pains you take with 
me." 

" I must now say farewell ! The three 
great points necessary to observe, in increas- 
ing your judgment, may be given you in three 
words : pause, inquire, and consider" 



15 



174 LEARNING TO THINK. 




CHAPTER XXII. 

I HAT is right, Charles. I am 
glad you are come, for I am now 
just ready for you. You seem a 
little out of breath, have you 
been running?" 
" Yes, sir, I had a good run, for I was afraid 
of being late." 

" Well, now for a little serious conversation. 
Learning to think is an excellent thing in a 
hundred ways, for it defends us from many 
evils, and secures to us many advantages. 
But what would be your opinion of a boy 
who was very thoughtful about his mornings, 
but never thought at all about his after- 
noons ?" 

" I should think him very silly. We have 
as much reason to think in an afternoon as in 
a morning." 

" But if he thought a great deal about the 
beginning of the day, is it necessary that he 
should think as much about the end of it ?" 



LEARNING TO THINK. 175 

" Every bit as necessary. Why, something 
might happen in an afternoon that required 
more thought than what happened in the 
morning." 

11 1 am glad that you see this so clearly, be- 
cause now you will admit that we ought to 
think about the end of life, as well as of the 
beginning." 

" Certainly." 

" And the more especially because some- 
thing will happen at the end of life that re- 
quires more thought than any other thing that 
can happen at the beginning. I mean death, 
If it is certain that we must die, and do not 
know when, ought we not to think of death 
every day of our lives ?" 

u I think we should." 

" I dare say that in your play you some- 
times blow bubbles with soap and water." 

" Yes, I have done that many a time." 

" Well ! which do you value most, one of 
the glittering bubbles you blow, that look so 
bright, or your humming-top ?" 

" Why, my humming-top ten times over : 
I would not give up my humming-top for a 
hundred bubbles of soap and water." 

" No ! Why not ?" 

u Because the bubble does not last a minute. 
The humming-top will serve me a very long 



176 LEARNING TO THINK. 

time ; but the bubble bursts while I am look- 
ing at it." 

" What you say is true ; and now as you 
are learning to think, if in your mere play- 
things, you value more what is lasting than 
what is passing away, you must learn to ap- 
ply the same reasoning to time and eternity. 
This life is very short, the life to come is very 
long ; you ought, then, according to your own 
showing, to value the life to come a hundred 
times more than the life that now is." 

" I certainly ought to do so." 

" The more you think of this, the more you 
will be convinced of its truth. 

'The bubble of life a breath may sever. 
But the precious soul will last for ever.' w 

" Old people ought to think a great deal 
about death." 

"Why so?" 

" Because they are sure to die soon, and, 
therefore, they ought to think about it." 

" And are not young people liable to die 
soon, also ? Some of them will doubtless live 
to old age ; but for every aged person that is 
carried to the grave, many younger people 
die." 

" Indeed !" 

" What I say is quite true, and the more 
we think of death, the more likely are we to 



LEARNING TO THINK. 177 

act well throughout our lives. Who would 
like to die thinking a bad thought, speaking 
a bad word, or doing a bad action?" 

" Nobody would like that." 

" And yet none of us know when we shall 
die, so that unless we think on death, we may 
be taken by surprise in an unguarded mo- 
ment. Tell me, Charles, what have been 
your own thoughts about death?" 

" I have always tried to put death away by 
not thinking about it." 

" They say that the ostrich of the desert, 
when hunted, hides her head in the sand, 
supposing that because she cannot see the 
hunters, the hunters cannot see her." 

"What a foolish bird!" 

" But do you think the bird more foolish 
than he who imagines that he can put off 
death, merely by putting away the thought 
of it?" 

" Perhaps not,but death is so very gloomy." 

" We make it so, Charles, when we see not 
the life that is beyond it. A good man says, 
' Death has nothing terrible in it, but what 
our life hath made so/ Is it not wiser, think 
you, to lessen our fears of death, by preparing 
for it, than to increase our terrors by living 
thoughtless lives ?" 

" I think it is." 



178 LEARNING TO THINK. 

"We are talking on a serious subject 
Charles ; but learning to think will be of little 
use to us, unless it enable us to learn to die. 
I wanted to speak with you on this point, not 
to put a shadow on your brow, but rather to 
put sunshine in your heart." 

" You are very kind to talk to me as vou 
do." 

* Why, it would be very unkind if I did 
not do so. I love to see you happy, but then 
I wish you to be happy for time and eternity. 
Suppose you were enjoying a day's pleasure, 
but had to cross a deep river at night, on 
your return home. Would it be acting the 
kinder part, to keep you laughing all the day 
long, or to say, Charles, you are very happy, 
but you will be not the less so, if you see 
after a boat to bear you over the water at 
night?" 

" Oh, it would be very unkind indeed, to let 
night come on without reminding me of the 
boat, if I had forgotten it. Night would be 
the worst time in the world to run about 
after a boat." 

" Well, then, as we have all to cross the 
river of death, we all ought to remind one 
another to make preparation. God's holy 
word calls upon us continually. ' The time 
is short/ 1 Cor. vii. 29. ' We all do fade as a 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



179 



leaf/ Isa. lxiv. 6. ' Dust thou art, and unto 
dust shall thou return/ Gen. iii. 19. 6 Watch, 
therefore : for ye know not what hour your 
Lord doth come/ Matt. xxiv. 42, are texts 
of Scripture ; and there are hundreds such, 
that we ought to regard." 




" I must think a little more about death." 
" God's word points out, too, a great dif- 
ference between the death of different peo- 
ple. i Mark the perfect man, and behold the 
upright : for the end of that man is peace.' 



ISO LEARNING TO THINK. 

Psa. xxxvii. 37. ' The wicked is driven away 
in his wickedness : but the righteous hath hope 
in his death/ Prov. xiv. 32. To learn to 
think of all the things in the world, and not 
to think of death, would be a terrible mis- 
take." 

"But it is so gloomy to think about the 
grave. I remember seeing my uncle before 
he died : I saw the doctor come and feel his 
pulse, while he held his watch in his hand : I 
always feel sad when I think of it." 

" 'If the grave affright thee/ says one/ learn 
to look beyond it.' It is sin, Charles, that 
makes death terrible ; but God can pardon sin, 
and take away the fear of death." 

" I should like not to be afraid of death." 

" Do you think the caterpillar has any 
reason to fear death ? Why it only changes 
him into a butterfly, giving him wings to fly 
with and be happy." 

" I should not fear death, if it would do for 
me what it does for the butterfly." 

" But, my dear Charles, if you have a friend 
in the Saviour of sinners, death will do a 
thousand times more for you than it does for 
the caterpillar. We will speak a little more 
of this the next time we meet, what I now 
want you to think of is, the necessity of both 
young and old preparing for death. I have 



LEARNING TO THINK. 1S1 

a book here that, in one part of it, sets forth 
the subject in so plain a way, that you will 
be sure to understand it.?' 

" Please to read that part to me." 

" A certain traveller, who had a distance to 
go — one part of his road leading through 
green fields, and the other through a tangled 
road of brambles and thorns — made great pre- 
parations for the first part of his journey. 

"He dressed himself in light and gay clothes, 
and put a cake in his pocket; he stuck a 
nosegay in his bosom, and taking a light slen- 
der cane in his hand, nimbly proceeded on his 
way along the beaten path across the green 
meadows. The sun shone in the skies, and 
on went the traveller comfortably, pleasantly 
and delightfully. 

' After a while, the road became rugged, 
and by the time night drew on, the traveller 
was in a pitiable plight. His provisions were 
exhausted; his clothes wet through, and 
partly torn from his back by the briers ; his 
flowers were faded ; and weary as he was, his 
slender cane would not bear his weight : a 
stream of water was before him, and darkness 
around him. 

" < Alas V said he, smiting his breast, € I am 
hungry, and have no food; wet to the skin, 
and have no dry clothes ; weary? and no staff 
16 



182 LEARNING TO THINK. 

to rest on ; I have a stream to cross, and here 
is no boat; I am bewildered, and have no 
guide ; it is dark, and I have no lantern. Foo' 
that I am ! why did I not provide for the end 
of my journey as well as for the beginning V 

"Now, Charles, time is hastening away, 
and we are all travellers ! Life is the begin- 
ning, death the end of our journey. If we 
have made preparation for both, happy are 
we ; but if otherwise, we resemble the foolish 
traveller." 

" I am a foolish traveller, that is certain, 
but what you have said will make me think 
about death ; the caterpillar and the foolish 
traveller will be uppermost in my thoughts." 

" Come again on Wednesday, and we will 
say something more about crossing the river." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 183 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

OME in, Charles ; better be a 
great deal before time than a lit- 
tle after it. I am glad to see you 
so ready to come. Whenever 
you make an appointment, ne- 
ver be behindhand, if it is possible to avoid 
it." 

" I ought to be in time, sir, when you take 
the trouble to teach me." 

" Punctuality produces order, the want of it 
causes confusion. I once heard of a man 
who called on a prime minister to be put into 
some office ; he was five minutes behind the 
time appointed. i The office was disposed of/ 
said the minister, ' five minutes ago.' " 

" And did he lose the place, sir, because he 
was five minutes too late ?" 

" He did ; and if you put the circumstance 
down in your memory, it will do you no 
harm." 

" If ever I have to call on a prime minister, 



184 LEARNING TO THINK. 

1 will take care not to be five minutes too 
late." 

" The prime minister will not want to see 
you on such an occasion just at present. You 
must learn to think a little more first, but it 
is very well to be prepared. To make a good 
resolution is a good thing, to keep it is a bet- 
ter. I was rather afraid of having tired you 
the last' evening we were together. We were 
speaking on a very grave subject 5 but your 
coming early seems to say that you are not 
displeased with me." 

" You are too kind for me to be displeased. 
I have thought a great deal of what you said 
about the caterpillar, and the traveller, and 
about its being sin that made death terrible." 

" I am glad to hear that. To see my young 
friends cheerful is a very pleasant thing, 
but then they should not forget that they 
are not to remain in this world for ever. Have 
you been much in the hq,bit of reading your 
Bible, Charles ?" 

" Not a great deal ; but I have read about 
Joseph and his brethren ; and king Pharaoh 
and his people being swallowed up in the sea ; 
and of Samson rending a lion ; and about the 
golden image ; and about Christ, and his 
apostles, in the New Testament." 

•" After a while I hope you will read it more, 



LEARNING TO THINK. 



185 



not so much for the interesting histories it 
contains, as to mark the dealings of God to- 
wards his chosen people, and to ponder on the 
way of salvation it sets forth before sinners." 

" I must read it more than I have done, 
and think more about it ; indeed, at present, 
I have hardly thought about it at all." 

" That is the case with hundreds and hun- 




dreds, who, though they read it from time to 
time, take it up and lay it down as though 
they have no interest in its contents. Shall 
I read a few striking remarks about it from 
a book I have here, which appear to sum up, 
in a few words, a great part of its contents ?" 
" Do, if you please." 

16* 



186 LEARNING TO THINK. 

u The account is very short, it begins thus 
' The Bible tells us all that we know of God, 
as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; all we 
know of heaven as a place of joy, and of hell 
as a place of torment.' " 

" If no other book besides the Bible tells 
us these things, we ought to read it indeed." 

" < The Bible is the only book that tells us 
of the beginning and the end. It is the only 
book that makes known to us our creation 
and redemption. No other book is the word 
of God. The Bible excites us to kindness, 
zeal, holiness, and happiness : it upholds all 
that is virtuous and good, and condemns 
every thing that is sinful in thought, in word, 
and in deed. The Bible tells us that all men 
have sinned, and come short of the glory of 
God ; and that the wicked shall be cast into 
hell, and all the nations that forget God. It 
tells us that God has found a ransom : that 
Jesus Christ, his Son, died upon the cross for 
sinners ; and that all who believe in him shall 
not perish, but have everlasting life.' Of all 
subjects most worth knowing, this is what 
every one in the world should know. All who 
believe the Bible, and live a life of faith in 
the Son of God, have the promise not only 
of this life, but of that which is to come. And 
those who disbelieve the Bible, despise the 



LEARNING TO THINK. 187 

hope of salvation in a crucified Redeemer, 
and lead a life of ungodliness, have in this 
world a life without peace, and a fearful look- 
ing for of eternal judgment in the next/ I 
hope that your friend Henry thinks much of 
these things; but he told me, that he had 
rather I would talk to you about them before 
he did." 

" I dare say he thought you knew them 
better than he did, that was the reason." 

" Very likely it was ; but it may do you 
both good to talk of them together. ' Those 
who reverence, love, and practise the precepts 
of the Bible, will find the book a blessing 5 
while those who deride, hate, and disobey its 
precepts, will bring on themselves the heaviest 
condemnation/ " 

" ■ The word of God has both warnings and 
encouragements, and it invites even little 
children to come to the Saviour. We all love 
glad tidings, but what tidings are there in the 
whole world of so joyous a kind, seeing that 
we all are sinners, as the glad tidings of the 
gospel, " God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believ- 
eth in him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life," John hi. 16/ This is a truth that 
should sink deep into every heart. I said, if 
you remember, that we were all travellers." 



188 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Yes, you did ; and you spoke of the tra- 
veller who set off without being provided for 
his journey." 

? Every one, too, who is journeying for- 
wards to heaven is also a pilgrim. In this 
journey, there are three very important points 
to which we should attend. The first is the 
setting off, and this should be done in youth. 
< Remember now thy Creator in the days of 
thy youth/ Eccles. xii. 1. The next is, hav- 
ing set off, to hold on our way without loi- 
tering, or drawing back. ' No man, having- 
put his hand to the plough, and looking back, 
is fit for the kingdom of God/ Luke ix. 62. 
The last is, to finish our course with joy, for 
then we shall find the end to be eternal life. 
Do you think you shall remember any part of 
this conversation ?" 

" Oh, yes ! a great deal of it." 

" It would have been a sad reflection on 
me, if, :n helping you to learn to think, I had 
neglected to speak to you of the way of sal- 
vation, the subject of all others the most 
important for us to think upon I trust 
that, by God's mercy, you and Henry will 
mourn for sin, pray against sin, hate sin, and 
forsake sin ; and that you will believe in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, love him, obey him, and 
praise him. So long as you do this, your 



LEARNING TO THINK. 189 

learning to think will be turned to good ac- 
count. I suppose, Charles, that you never 
had such a serious conversation before." 

" Never in my life. I have been told that 
the Bible is the best of books, but I have 
never been talked to in this way before." 

" Here are two or three little books. Put 
them in your pocket. You will find them in- 
teresting, and all of them say something about 
the Saviour, and the only way of salvation ; 
namely, through faith in Him who died on 
the cross, the just for the unjust." 

" Thank you, sir. They are pretty books, 
indeed. Every one has a picture." 

a Yes the pictures are meant to catch the 
eye, but the printed part is to catch the heart. 
There was a time when such little books 
could not be had for love or money, but now 
they are scattered about the country by thou- 
sands. A book is one of those things from 
which every thinking reader may take some- 
thing away, without leaving the less behind." 

" So it is ; how strange !" 

"That will do for you to think upon. 
Suppose you try to puzzle Henry with the 
question, and put it in this shape : the ans- 
wer will be, you know, the contents of a 
book : — 



190 LEARNING TO THINK. 

I have what seems, as I may say, 

A wonder to the mind, 
For you may take it all away, 
A dozen times, or more, a day, 

Yet leave it all behind." 

"Yes, that will do capitally. It will be 
sure to puzzle him ; and yet, I hardly know, 
for he thinks, and thinks, till he finds out 
most things." 

" Well ! if he should find it out, ask him 
another question. I have one here that I 
have puzzled at for years, and have not found 
out yet. It is this, and if you and Henry 
puzzle at it for an hour, it will not be an hour 
thrown away : — 

How should the young attempt to know 

Betimes the Saviour's love ? 
How can they best serve man below, 

And praise the Lord above ? 

" The best answer that I can find is in the 
119th Psalm, and the latter part of the 9th 
verse ; but try if you and Henry can find out 
a better." 



LEARNING TO THINK. 191 




CHAPTER XXIV. 

ELL, Charles, this will be our 
last evening, for Henry is ex- 
pected home to-morrow. I 
must now see what progress 
you have made in learning to 
think." 

" You will call me a very dull learner ; but, 
by and by, I may get on better. Such a 
comical thing happened to me last night. 
When I went up stairs to bed, I heard a noise 
among some boxes which had been piled up 
one upon another. Every time I walked 
across the room, the noise came. It was just 
like a mouse gnawing wood." 

" And very likely it was a mouse gnawing 
itself a hole through the floor." 

" I stood still a minute to consider. Now, 
thought I, if Mr. White and Henry were 
here, they would be sure to find it out, so I 
determined to do the same." 
" And how did you proceed ?" 



192 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" On walking across the room, I found that 
the noise did not come till I set my foot on a 
creaking board. Then I tried it over and 
over again, till I traced the noise to the top- 
most box. ' Oh, oh ! ? thought 1, 6 now I have 
got you, Mr. Mouse/ So I suddenly lifted 
up the lid, but there was neither mouse nor 
any thing else to be seen." 

" Then what did you do next ?" 
" Why, I said to myself, neither Mr. White 
nor Henry would give it up, so I will find it 
out yet. When the box was opened, it never 
made the least noise, though I set my foot on 
the creaking board ; but when the lid was 
down, the noise came as before. I sat down 
on the side of the bed, and thought a moment, 
and then it struck me, that it might not be a 
mouse, but something about the box itself." 
" Very good reasoning indeed." 
" I went to the box and shook it gently, 
and the noise came directly. I then put 
down the lid and shook the box, but all was 
quiet. ' Oh V said I, ' it must have something 
to do with the lid/ Looking at it all round, 
at last I saw the fastening shake." 

" You are a thinker, Charles, already." 
"Looking at the lid, while I shook the box 
gently, at last I saw that the fastening was 
quite loose, and that the staple went nick-nack 



LEARNING TO THINK. 193 

against the lock. It was the staple that had 
made all the noise ; so I put a bit of paper 
round it, and never heard the noise after." 

" You managed very well. This comes of 
learning to think. But now, Charles, let me 
hear you think aloud about this sea-shell." 

" Oh, it is a very pretty one. Let me see ! 
What are its parts and qualities ? It has an 
outside, and an inside. It is hard and brittle, 
for the edges are chipped a little. It is of a 
yellowish brown on the outside, and of a 
beautiful pink in the inside. It is light, and 
of a curious form ; it has no taste ; and when 
I put it to my ear, it roars." 

" Very good ! You get on very well." 

" It is useful as a chimney ornament, and, 
very likely, the fish that lived in it was good 
to eat. Now for its associations. It reminds 
me of roaring billows, of floating islands, of 
coral rocks, and of shipwrecks ; and the les- 
son I learn from it is, that if God gave the fish 
such a beautiful house to dwell in, he will take 
care and provide for all who trust in him." 

" You are getting on in learning to think 
very creditably. And now for some ques- 
tions. How would you find out the number 
of gooseberries in a peck ?" 

" I would measure 01 a half pint of them, 
17 



194 LEARNING TO THINK. 

and count them, and multiply the number by 
the number of half-pints in a peck." 

" And that would be the very best way 
you could adopt. I dare say that you re- 
member why a kite flies in the air ?" 

" Yes ! It is because the paper of which it 
is made is so light, and because the string 
pulling it one way, and the tail of it the other, 
it is held with its broad face to the wind." 

" Tell me why a hoop bowls along ; why 
a peg-top spins ; and why a ball bounces." 

" The hoop bowls and the top spins, be- 
cause, being set in motion, according to a 
law in nature, they must keep up that motion 
till stopped by other causes. And the ball 
bounces, because the part dented in by strik- 
ing against the ground, makes a sudden spring, 
being elastic, to recover its round form, and 
this forces it upwards." 

" Now, perhaps, you will tell, me, if one 
man can hear the report of a gun a mile off, 
at what distance twenty men can hear it." 

" Why twen — no, no ! Twenty men can- 
not hear it any farther than one man. They 
can all hear it at just the same distance, that 
is, if none of them are hard of hearing." 

" It is not so easy to puzzle you now, as it 
was, by a great deal. Since you have begun 
to learn to think, you have had your wits 



LEARNING TO THINK. 195 

more about you. I dare say that you could 
tell me now where they catch red herrings ?" 

" They catch the herrings in the sea, but 
they are not red herrings till they are salted 
and dried, I remember that." 

" Henry told me that he summed up for 
you some of the advantages of thoughtfulness. 
Have you forgotten what he said ?" 

" I should have forgotten it, I am afraid ; 
but I asked him afterwards to write it down. 
See, I have it here, and will read it, though 
now I almost have it by heart. c Thinking 
adds to our pleasure, making every thing 
around us interesting. It produces a love of 
thought, and a habit of pausing and consider- 
ing before replying to a question. It extends 
our knowledge and power, quickens our 
faculties, corrects our judgment, enlarges our 
minds, and explains many things around us, 
which we do not understand. It lessens la- 
bour, makes hard things easy, protects us 
from evils which thoughtlessness brings upon 
us, and renders us more useful and more hap- 
py. In a word, if we learn to think, and put 
our thoughts to a good use, we shall not fail, 
through the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to 
fear and obey God, and to love and serve 
mankind.' " 

" Did you read any of your little books ?" 



196 LEARNING TO THINK. 

" Yes ; and I lent one of them, which was 
about the value of the soul, to my cousin ; for 
I thought that, perhaps, we might both get 
good from the same book." 

" A very proper thought too ; I hope you 
will follow out your intention of reading God's 
word more, for that will put the best thoughts 
into your head at all times. I hope you will 
often seek divine aid by private and earnest 
prayer. To get to heaven should be the first 
object of every one on earth ; and let us, also, 
seek to help others on their way there. Fare- 
well, for the present. Now and then, I shall, 
no doubt, see you." 

" I am very much obliged by the pains you 
have taken with me, and I shall not forget 
to think of what you have told me." 

" May it please God to make it a blessing 
to you." 

" Farewell, sir ; I thank you again and 
again for all your kindness." 

" Farewell ! Earnestly pray to God to 
give you his Holy Spirit that you may be 
taught aright, and made wise unto salvation, 
through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Good 
thoughts are the beginning of good deeds. 
To think aright is the seed, or the sapling ; to 
act right is the tree and the fruit. The way 
to be useful, and peaceful, and happy, is to 



LEARNING TO THINK. 197 

seek Divine grace, to watch and pray, and to 
fear God and keep his commandments. 

' The Lord of glory keep in sight, 
In all your thoughts and ways; 
He only learns to think aright, 
Who reads His word with true delight, 
And lives to act His praise.' " 



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